neighborhood party and Frank Howard had interested Jean considerably,
especially because he told her he was bound for France the first of
November. Jean was always so easily impressed just the first few times
she met a person. It took Kit a long time to really admit a stranger
to her circle of selected ones, although she made friends easily. And
she had never quite forgiven Frank Howard for trespassing in the berry
patch, even though it had been in the cause of science. Besides, the
last year, Jean had seemed to grow aloof from the others. Perhaps
it had been her trip away from home or her ambition. Kit could not
precisely define the change but it was there, and she felt that Jean
troubled herself altogether too much over things unseen.
Doris’s letter was all about the opening of school, and Tommy asked
questions about Delphi.
“When you write, do tell us about the things that happen there, and
just what you think about it. I don’t like descriptions in books, I
like the talk part. You know what I mean. Jack and I have been helping
the carpenters at Woodhow every day after school. The house is coming
along fine and the men say we help a lot. Has Uncle Bart got any pets
at all?”
Kit laughed over this. If he could only have seen Uncle Bart’s pets.
His mummy and horned toads, the chimpanzee skull beaming at one from
a dark corner, and the Cambodian war mask from another. It seemed as
if every time she looked around the house she found something new, and
with each curio there went a story. Oddly enough, the Dean thawed more
under Kit’s persuasion when she begged for the stories than at any
other time. After each meal, it was his custom to take a few moments’
relaxation in his study. Kit found at these times that he was in his
best mood. Relaxed and thoughtful, he would lean back in the deep
leather chair between the flat-topped desk and the fireplace, and smoke
leisurely. Even his pipe had come from Persia, its amber stem very
slender and beautifully curved, its bowl a marvel of carving.
Kit sat pondering over her father’s and mother’s letters. School would
begin in another week, and she was to enter the third year in high
school. And yet, after what her father had written, she felt that she
was not giving the Dean a square deal.
The odor of tobacco came through the study window, and acting on the
spur of the moment, she stepped around the corner of the porch and
perched herself on the window sill.
“Are you busy, Uncle Bart?” Anybody who was well-acquainted with Kit
would have suspected the gentleness of her tone, but the Dean looked
over at her with a little pleased smile. Her coming was almost an
answer to his reverie.
“Not at all, my dear, not at all. In fact, I was just thinking of you.
I am inclined to think after all that we will begin with the geological
periods. I wish you to get your data on prehistoric peoples assembled
in your mind before we take up any definite groups.”
“That’s all right,” Kit answered, “I don’t mind one bit. I’ll do
anything you tell me to, Uncle Bart, because,” this very earnestly, “I
do feel as if I hadn’t played quite fair. I mean in coming out here,
and landing on you suddenly, without warning you I was a girl, and I
want to make up to you for it in every possible way. I’ll study bones
and ruins and rocks, and anything you tell me to, but I want to make
sure first that you really like me. Just as I am, I mean, before you
know for certain whether all this is going to take.”
The Dean glanced up in a startled manner and looked at the face framed
by the window quite as if he had never really given it an interested
scrutiny before. Not being inclined to sentiment by nature, he had
regarded Kit so far solely from the experimental standpoint. Since she
had turned out to be a girl, he had decided to make the best of it,
and at least try the effect of the course of instruction upon her. The
personal equation had never entered into his calculation, and yet here
was Kit forcing it upon him, quite as plainly as though she had said,
“Do you like me or don’t you? If you don’t, I think I had better go
back home.”
“Well, bless my heart,” he said, rubbing his head. “I thought that
we had settled all that. Of course, my dear, the reason I preferred
a boy was because, well--” the Dean floundered, “because scientists
hold a consensus of opinion that through--hem--through centuries of
cultivation, I may say, collegiate development--the male brain offers a
better soil, as it were, for the--er--er--”
“The flower of genius?” suggested Kit. “I don’t think that’s so at all,
Uncle Bart, and I’ll tell you why. You take the farm at home. Dad says
that our land in Elmhurst is no good because it’s been worked over and
over, and it’s all worn out, but if you plow deep and strike a brand
new subsoil you get wonderful crops. Just think what a lovely time
you’ll have planting crops in my unplowed brain cells.”
The first laugh she had ever heard came from the Dean’s lips, although
it was more of a chuckle. His next question was apparently irrelevant.
“How do you think you’re going to like Hope College?”
“All right,” Kit responded cheerfully. “I only hope it likes me. I’ve
met a few of the boys and girls through Rex and Aunt Della, and I like
them awfully well. At home they’re nice to you if they know who you
are, and all about your family. But here it seems as if they either
like you or not. Just when they first meet you, you’re taken right into
the fold on the strength of what you are yourself.”
The door opened with a little, light, deprecating tap first from
Della’s fingertips. She glanced around the side of it cautiously to
be sure she was not disturbing the Dean, and smiled when she saw the
two. The Dean’s pipe had gone out, and he was leaning over the desk
listening as eagerly as though he had been a boy himself, while Kit,
with her hands clasped behind her head and leaning against the window
frame, chatted. Usually people conversed with the Dean, they never
chatted, and Della realized that Kit had already passed the outposts of
the Dean’s defenses.
9. Hope College
Hope College was built of gray fieldstone covered with climbing
woodbine and Virginia creeper, and it dominated the little town. There
were five buildings in the campus group, the main building, laboratory,
library and gymnasium, boys’ dormitory, and chapel.
Kit never forgot the first morning when the classes met in Assembly
Hall, and the Dean addressed them on the work and aims of the coming
year. For the life of her, she could not keep her mind on all he was
saying or the solemnity of the moment, because just at the very last
minute when the chapel chimes stopped ringing, Jeannette Flambeau
entered through the heavy doors at the back of the big, crowded hall.
It seemed as though everyone’s eyes were watching the platform, but Kit
saw the slender, silent figure standing there alone. She was dressed
in black, a soft wool suit, and her brown hair, no longer in pigtails,
hung loosely to her shoulders. She waited there, it seemed to Kit,
expectant on the threshold of opportunity, not knowing which way to go,
and without a friendly hand extended to her in welcome or guidance.
Georgia Riggs, who sat next to Kit, glanced back to see what had
attracted her attention, and made a funny little sound with her mouth.
“I never thought she’d have the nerve to really do it,” she whispered.
“Isn’t she odd?”
A quick impulsive wave of indignation swept over Kit and she rose from
her seat, passing straight down the aisle without even being aware of
the curious glances which followed her. She took Jeannette by storm.
“You’re in my class, aren’t you?” she whispered quickly. “It’s right
over here, and there’s a seat beside me. I don’t know anyone either,
and I’m so glad to see you, so I’ll have someone to talk to.”
Jeannette never answered, but smiled with a quick flash of
appreciation, the smile which always seemed to illumine her grave face.
She followed Kit back to her seat, and Georgia exchanged glances with
her right-hand neighbor, Amy Parker. Kit was altogether too new to
realize just exactly what she had done. Being the Dean’s grandniece,
she considered herself unconsciously a privileged person. As a matter
of course, Della had accompanied her that morning and introduced
her to four or five girls in the junior prep class, who came from
the representative best families of the town. Also, as a matter of
course, she had been welcomed as one of them, but Kit, with her inborn
democratic ideas, never even realized that she occupied one of the
seats of the mighty, in a circle of the favored few, and that she had
smashed all tradition by introducing into that circle a Flambeau. In
fact, even if she had known, she would probably have been thoroughly
indignant at any such spirit among the girls themselves.
The whole morning was taken up with the assigning of students to
classes. Kit loved the curious bustle and excitement of it all. It was
so different from the small high school back home, and there were many
more boys and girls than she had expected to see. Almost, as she passed
from room to room, through the different buildings, she wished she
were staying there as a year pupil. Amy introduced her to her closest
friend, Peggy Barrows, a girl from South Dakota, who took them up to
her quarters in one of the dormitories.
“Gee,” Kit said, looking around her, “I wish I were going to live here.
Peggy, you’ll have to entertain us often. It’s so kind of solitary and
restful, isn’t it, up here?”
“Solitary,” scoffed Peggy. “I’ve been here four days getting settled,
and you might just as well call the side show of a circus solitary.
There isn’t even the ghost of privacy. I’m mobbed every time I try to
sit and collect my thoughts.”
“Who wants to collect their thoughts, anyway?” asked Amy.
“Have you seen Virginia’s room? Wait.” Peggy darted out of her door and
across the hall. On the door opposite a card bore the legend in large
black letters:
KEEP OUT
STUDY HOUR
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” she said, tapping just the same.
“Nobody’s studying today. Let us in, Ginny.”
A sound of scraping over the floor, and muffled giggles came to waiting
ones in the hall, then the door was thrown wide, and Kit caught her
first glimpse of Virginia Parks, the most popular girl at Hope. She was
about seventeen, but a short, pudgy type, with curly rumpled hair and
blue eyes. There were five other girls with her, and papers littered
the bed, chairs, and desk.
“We’re terribly busy, kids,” Virginia said, “What do you want?”
“Just to look at your room. Isn’t it pretty, Kit? This is Kit Craig,
Ginny.”
“Hope you’ll like it here,” she said. “I’m from the East, too, only not
so far as you are, but we think Pennsylvania’s east, out here. How do
you like the color scheme?”
Kit liked it and said so emphatically. The room was in aqua and coral.
The chairs were slipcovered in a coral print on an aqua background and
the walls were grey. Kit was invited to sit down on one of the beds.
“I wish I stayed here all the time,” Kit exclaimed. “You miss the fun,
being a day student, don’t you?”
“Never mind,” Virginia told her, “we’ll have some special celebrations
all for you. Now clear out, kids, because I’ve got a deadline to make.”
“Ginny’s editor of the _Spirit_,” Peg said. “Do you have any
journalistic ability, Kit?”
“I’ve been told I write pretty well, but I never did anything in the
newspaper line.”
“I think she should have stayed out, she doesn’t belong here,” one of
the other girls was saying in another part of the room. “None of that
family has ever amounted to anything, except in the fishing industry--”
But Kit overheard this and interrupted point-blank. She was sitting up
very straight on the bed, with a certain expression around her mouth,
and a very steady look in her eyes.
“Just a minute,” she said quickly. “Do you mean Jeannette Flambeau?
Because if you do, I don’t think that’s fair.”
Virginia quickly agreed with Kit, but Peg patted her in a conciliatory
manner.
“Now, don’t take it to heart so,” she said, “why should it matter to
you? Forget it.”
But Kit could not be diverted, and the color rose belligerently in
Amy’s cheeks, too.
“I don’t see why you feel you have to take Jeannette Flambeau’s part,”
she said. “If you knew all about her the way we girls do, you’d let her
alone.”
“I don’t see how she ever came up here anyway,” Georgia remarked. “It’s
just exactly as if one of her brothers tried to come in. Do you think
the boys would stand for that?”
“Jeepers, why shouldn’t they?” demanded Kit hotly. “And I’d like to
know what they’ve got to say about it anyway. I don’t think that’s the
college spirit. Anyone who wants an education and is willing to work
for it should be admitted.”
“Yes, but if they had any sense at all,” responded Georgia placidly,
“they wouldn’t put themselves into a position of being snubbed. You
can talk all you want to about the college spirit from the standpoint
of Deans and faculties, but when all’s said and done, it’s the student
spirit that rules. I’ll bet that she doesn’t stay here a month. She
hasn’t anyone to help her at home and can’t afford tutoring, so she’ll
just peter out.”
The gong sounded in the hall below for afternoon classes, so the
discussion came to an abrupt end. Kit found herself watching Jeannette.
There was a peculiar aloofness about the girl which seemed to put
almost a wall of defense around her. She was intensely interested in
everything, one could see that plainly, except the other students, and
it seemed as if she simply overlooked them. When Kit came down the
stairs, she glanced into the library and saw Jeannette in there alone,
bending down before the long wall book shelves. Across the wide hall
there were groups of boys and girls in the two long lounges, laughing
and talking together, and every couch and chair in both rooms were
filled, but Jeannette was alone.
Jeannette was holding a volume of _Treasure Island_, illustrated
in color. She turned in surprise at the touch of Kit’s hand on her
shoulder.
“I thought we could walk down toward the bluff together, because we go
the same way,” suggested Kit. “How do you like it here?”
“I like it,” responded Jeannette slowly, with a certain dignified
shyness that was characteristic of her. “My mother has told me all
about it. She liked the library when she was here. She told me where
her room was upstairs, too, but I didn’t want to go up while the girls
were there.”
“Let’s go up now, while they’re all downstairs,” Kit said impulsively.
“I’ll take you. Which dorm was she in?”
“Her name was Mary Douglas. It’s the Douglas Dormitory. Her father was
one of the founders here, Malcolm Douglas.”
Kit listened in utter amazement and with a rising sense of joy. Here
was Jeannette Flambeau, flouted and disdained by the little crowd
of girls who happened to live in a certain district of Delphi, but
claiming her grandfather was a founder of the college. At that very
moment Kit planned her surprise on the girls.
As they walked through the hall together, Georgia and the others
followed them with their glances and smiled. The two paused before a
big bronze tablet with the name of the founders on it. There it was,
third from the last, Malcolm Douglas.
“He came from Canada,” said Jeannette, “and settled here. Later on he
went into Minnesota, and on into Dakota. The family was very poor after
he died, but my mother came here for two years, and even when I was a
little girl, seven or eight years old, before she died, she used to
tell me how she loved it, and that I must come here, too.”
“Don’t any of your brothers want to come? They’re all older than you,
aren’t they.”
Jeannette shook her head and smiled curiously. “They are all Flambeau,
every one. They eat, and sleep and fish, that’s all.”
Kit led the way to the upper floor, where the dorms were, and meeting
Virginia, she asked the way to the Douglas.
“Why, you were in that one today,” answered Virginia in surprise. “It’s
our dorm, didn’t you know?”
“Oh, thanks a lot,” Kit said with suspicious alacrity, as she guided
Jeannette down the corridor. Virginia glanced back at them both,
speculatively, wondering just what special business could take two new
day students into the most exclusive dormitory at Hope.
10. The Surprise
Kit deliberately planned her campaign for the following week, and the
only girl she took into her confidence was Anne Bellamy. It had been
the greatest relief when Anne returned to Delphi for the fall term.
There was something good-natured and comfortably serene about Anne that
made her companionship a relief from that of the other girls. Jean
often said back home that Kit was such a bunch of fireworks herself,
she always needed the background of a calm silent night or a placid
temperament to set her off properly.
“Golly, Anne,” Kit exclaimed, sinking with a luxurious sigh of content
down among the cushions on the broad couch in the Bellamy’s living
room, “I’d give anything, sometimes, if I’d been an only child. Of
course, you’ve got a brother, but you’re the only girl. You don’t know
what it is to be one of four. I share my room with Doris, back home,
and all honors with Jean. Then, of course, there’s Tommy, and while we
are all crazy about each other, still you do have to elbow your way
through a large family, if you want to keep on being yourself. Did you
ever read anything of old Joaquin Miller, the poet of the Sierras?”
Anne shook her head.
“No, I don’t suppose you have,” Kit went on happily, “that’s one reason
why you and I are going to be terribly good friends, ’cause you don’t
know everything in creation. It seems to me I can’t speak of anything
at all at home now that Jean doesn’t know more about it than I do, or
Doris thinks she does, which is worse. Don’t mind me this morning. I
just got a family letter, full of don’ts.”
“Yes, and you’re just as likely as not going to be homesick tomorrow,”
laughed Anne.
“That isn’t what I really came over for. You know Jeannette Flambeau.
The kids don’t like her going to Hope.”
“Don’t they?” Anne asked mildly. “Well, what are they going to do about
it? I thought that’s what colleges were for. Who’s against her?”
“I don’t think it’s exactly anything definite or violent, but you know
how awfully uncomfortable they can make her. There’s Amy Roberts and
Georgia Riggs and Peg Barrows and the Tony Conyers crowd.”
“She won’t miss anything special, even if they do try to snub her,”
answered Anne laughingly. “This is my second year at Hope, and I want
to tell you right now that Ginny rules in the Douglas dorm. If you can
get her on Jeannette’s side, the other girls will follow right along
like sheep.”
“Do you suppose,” Kit leaned forward impressively, as she sprang her
plan, “do you suppose Ginny would lend her room for a Founders’ Tea?”
“A Founders’ Tea,” repeated Anne. “What’s that?”
Kit spoke slowly and with great expression, “A tea in honor of Malcolm
Douglas, pioneer founder of Hope College, and grandfather of Jeannette
Flambeau.”
Anne’s blue eyes widened in amazement, and she gasped, “How did you
find out? Does Jeannette know?”
“Of course she knows. She told me all about it herself, but I don’t
think she realizes what a nice handy little club of defense it gives
her against the girls. I want to spring it on them at the tea, and
you’ve got to help me get it up. We’ll coax Ginny into lending us her
room first, and I’ll look up all about Malcolm Douglas, and write
something clever about the historic founding of Hope. Then we’ll send
out mysterious little invitations, and just say on them, ‘To meet a
Founder’s granddaughter.’”
“When?” asked Anne reflectively. “You ought to do it soon, so if it
works they’ll take her into the different clubs right away. I think you
ought to try to see Virginia today after classes and get her advice.
Another thing, Kit, do you suppose Jeannette would have any things of
her grandfather’s we could kind of spring on them unexpectedly?”
Kit’s eyes kindled with appreciation. “That’s a worthy thought. Sort of
corroborative evidence, as it were. Anne, you’re a genius.” She jumped
up from the couch and started to leave. “I think it’s up to me to go
and prepare Virginia. You make out a list of things that we’ll want for
the tea. You’d better be the refreshment chairman, and we’ll try and
make it a week from next Saturday.”
“Too far off,” Anne warned. “Better do it while it’s fresh in your
mind, before you start lectures.”
“I guess I’ll go over now. It’s only a little after five, and that’ll
keep me from answering the family letters until I’ve calmed down. If
you see anyone looking for me, tell them I’ll be right back. I’ll stop
in the library and look up Malcolm’s historic record, on my way, so you
may truthfully announce I’m doing research.”
Kit went up the hill road buoyantly. She liked to set a goal for
herself this way. Delphi had appeared rather barren as a field for her
real endeavor, but now with the opening of school, she could see her
way ahead to starting something, which she sincerely hoped she could
finish. Coming along the sidewalk that bounded the campus on the south,
she met Ginny on her way back from the post office.
“This is ever so-much better than going upstairs,” Kit said. “Let’s
walk around the campus twice, while I unburden my soul.”
At the second lap, the whole plan had been matured by Virginia’s quick
sympathy and understanding.
“And it will do them good, too,” she said as they parted. “That’s not
the college spirit by a long shot, and you’re perfectly right, Kit,
but just the same it’s easier to get it across to the girls in this way
with a nice friendly accompaniment of sandwiches, and iced tea. And
whatever you do, don’t breathe a single word to anybody. I wouldn’t
even tell Jeannette herself that she is to be the guest of honor. She’d
run like a deer, if she even suspected it.”
The date of the Founders’ Tea was set for the following Saturday. Kit
composed the invitations herself and wrote them on small cards.
Saturday, October Second, Three to Five.
You are invited to attend a Founders’ Tea,
Douglas Dormitory, Hope College,
Virginia Parks’s Study.
“Diffident, modest, and correct,” said Kit, critically, when she showed
them to Anne. “Now, what are you going to have to eat, Anne? Isn’t
there something besides just plain tea? Couldn’t we fix up some kind of
glorified lemonade?”
“I’ve got it all down,” answered Anne. “Grape juice, ginger ale and
lemons. Sound good? And six kinds of sandwiches and cookies.”
“It’s perfectly swell,” exclaimed Kit. “Aunt Della told me when I first
started in that I could give a party for the girls, and this is it.
After it is all over I’ll tell her about Jeannette, and I know she’ll
enjoy it and approve.”
“Is Ginny going to decorate the study for the occasion?” asked Anne.
“We ought to have something sort of different, don’t you think?”
“Pioneer stuff would be the only thing, and I don’t know where we’d
scare that up.”
“There’s a whole cabinet of them in the Dean’s room at the college.”
The two girls looked at each other wisely. The subject really needed
no argument or discussion. Kit said briefly, “I’ll try. I think I can
get some of them anyway if I approach Uncle Bart as a humble student
seeking knowledge.”
All unprepared for the onslaught, the Dean sat enjoying his
after-dinner smoke that evening when Kit came to the door and knocked.
“Come in,” he called a little bit testily, looking over his glasses at
the intruder. “I don’t think I can talk with you just now, my dear,” he
said, “I’m very busy working out a dynasty problem.”
“Oh, but I’d love to help,” Kit pleaded, “and I did help before on the
aborigines of Japan, didn’t I? I even remember their names, the Ainos.”
“This is early Egyptian. Something you know nothing whatever about.”
“Just mummies?” inquired Kit.
The Dean coughed, and turned back to the pamphlets before him. “Remains
have been discovered,” he began in quite the tone he used in Assembly,
“of the lost tribe of the Nemi. When the Greeks, my dear, obtained
a foothold in Carthage and along the Mediterranean coast, the Nemi
remained unconquered and retreated to the mountain fastnesses, west of
the source of the Nile.”
“Well, I know all about that,” Kit answered, perching herself on the
arm of a chair, across from him. “Just see,” and she counted off on
her fingers, “Livingstone-Stanley--Victoria Falls--Zambesi--and Kipling
wrote all about the people in _Fuzzy-Wuzzy_.”
“No, no, no, not a bit like it,” the Dean exclaimed. “My dear child,
learn to think in centuries and epochs. The long and short of it is,
there have been some very wonderful remains of the Nemi recently
discovered, and I have been honored by a commission from the Institute
to write a complete summary of the results of the expedition and its
historic significance.”
“Don’t you wish you’d been there when they dug them up? That’s what I’d
love, the exploring part. I should think it would be dreadfully dry
trying to make bones sit up and talk, when you are so far away from it
all.”