they are sending me the Amenotaph urn, and a sitting image of Annui.
I believe with these two I shall be able to establish as a fact the
survival of the Greek influence in ancient Egypt. My dear, you have no
idea,” he added warmly, “how much this explains if it is true. There
may be even Phoenician data before I finish investigating.”
“Phoenicians,” thought Kit, although she said nothing. “Yes, I do
remember about them, too. Tin--ancient Britain--and something about
Carthage.” Then she said aloud very positively and earnestly, “I know
I can help you a lot with this, Uncle Bart, if you will only let me,
because history is my favorite subject, and the reason I came to speak
to you tonight is this. We girls are going to have a Founders’ Tea,
Saturday afternoon. Just a little informal affair, but I’d like to
give it a--” She hesitated for the right word, and the Dean nodded
encouragingly, being in a better mood.
“Semblance of verity? Are you preparing a treatise?”
“No. I want something they can look at. And I knew if I told you about
it, you’d let us take a few of the old things out of that cabinet
in your room at the college. All I need would be--well, say a few
portraits of any of the founders of Hope, and any of the relics of the
Indians or French explorers.”
The Dean graciously detached a key from the ring at one end of his
watch chain.
Kit left with it as though she bore a trophy. The next day the last
preparations were completed for impressing on the girls of Hope College
the honor of having a Founder’s granddaughter in their midst.
11. The Mysterious Guest
“I think you ought to preside, Kit,” Virginia said as she arranged the
table. “It’s your party, and you ought to serve.”
“Takes too much concentration,” Kit returned. “Anne’ll help you. I want
to have my mind perfectly clear to manage the thing. You see, Jeannette
doesn’t know a thing about it yet, and there’s no knowing how she’ll
take it. Wouldn’t it be funny if she got proud and haughty and marched
away from our Founders’ Tea?”
“I don’t think you ought to spring it until after we’ve had
refreshments. Food has such a mellowing effect on people. It’s all
a question of tact, though. If I were you, I’d talk to them in an
intimate sort of way instead of lingering too much on the historic
value. Better straighten Malcolm, over there. He looks kind of topply.”
Kit regarded the framed steel engraving of Malcolm Douglas almost
fondly. It occupied a prominent spot specially cleared for it in the
middle of the wall.
Backed by Della’s approval and interest, Kit had called at several
homes where the descendants of other founders lived, and the results
were gratifying. Mrs. Peter Bradbury had contributed two Indian
blankets and a hunting bag, besides an old pair of saddle bags used by
an early missionary bishop in the Northwest. From the cabinet in the
Dean’s room had come mostly records, old documents carefully framed,
and several letters written by the founders themselves.
“Golly,” Kit said as she gave a last touch to her exhibit, “of course
these are important, but I like the Indian and hunting things best.
I wish I could run away with that double pair of buffalo horns that
belonged to Dr. Gleason’s granduncle or somebody. I like them better
than anything.”
A quick rap came on the door, and before Virginia could even call “come
in” Peggy entered with her usual galaxy behind her, Amy, Georgia, and a
newcomer from Iowa, Henrietta Jenkins.
“Tony Conyers sent word she’d be ready in five minutes,” said Georgia.
“She’s got a lot of the girls in there with her. Ginny, I think this is
a perfectly stupendous idea of yours.”
“’Tisn’t mine,” answered Virginia, “it’s Kit’s. This is her party. Her
coming-out party at Hope.”
“Oh, are you the founder’s granddaughter?” Amy inquired, her eyes
opening wide.
“No, I’m not,” replied Kit. “I wish this minute I could tell you about
my ancestors. I’ve got some beauts. Peggy, don’t sit on the almonds.
They’re right behind you in that glass dish.”
The room filled up rapidly with people. Kit declared after she had been
the rounds four times that she felt exactly like the lecturer in a
museum, telling the history of the relics over and over again. Nobody
but Anne knew how anxious she was as the minutes slipped by and no
Jeannette appeared. It would never do to have a climax happen without
the surprise of her presence to carry it off. The refreshments had all
been served, and the clock on top of the bookshelves showed that it was
five, when Virginia called; “You’d better start in on your Founders’
talk, Kit. We’ve only got about half an hour.”
There was a baffled look in Kit’s eyes, as she picked up the challenge
and rose from her chair. Virginia must know perfectly well how untimely
it was to start to spring the surprise while there was a running chance
of Jeannette appearing. Still there was a hush, and the girls faced her
expectantly.
“As you all know,” began Kit, “the old bronze tablet in the lower hall
carries names on its roll of honor which not only uphold the glory
of Hope College, but also of the entire town of Delphi, of the entire
state, I may say of Wisconsin.
“There are few of us here today, if any,” continued Kit slowly, one eye
watching the concrete walk across the campus from the nearest window,
“who can boast of a Hope founder in her family.”
“I can, almost,” interrupted Tony, “my sister Marie was engaged for a
little while to Bernard Giron. If she had only married him, we would
have had a ‘Founder’ in the family.”
“Tony,” said Kit, severely, “I am dealing with facts, not prospects,
and you ought not reveal any family secrets, either. I say it is a
great honor to be a direct descendant of a ‘Founder,’ and we have one
in our class. A girl, too modest to take advantage of her grandfather’s
record.” She paused impressively, but with a quickening gleam in her
eyes, as there suddenly came in view a hurrying figure in a gray suit
on the campus walk. It was Jeannette herself, late, but in time to
create the desired sensation.
Kit drew a deep breath, and plunged back to her subject, considering
exactly the time it would take for the belated guest to reach the study.
“Since all the girls here belong to this dormitory, it seems
appropriate that the founder whose memory we honor should be Malcolm
Douglas. His portrait hangs on the wall, evidently taken from an old
likeness.” Oh, how she wished the family could hear her now! “There
is no more adventurous or thrilling career in the annals of historic
Delphi than that of the illustrious Scotchman. Making his way through
the perils of the wilderness, he came from Quebec with a party of fur
traders and pioneer explorers.”
“Don’t hit too far back, Kit,” interrupted Peggy, alertly. “If he was
a founder, you can’t have him trotting over wilderness trails with
Marquette and Lasalle, you know.”
“Nevertheless,” responded Kit, ignoring her, “he is one of the
founders of this college. He came here in his early twenties, and
married Lucia, the daughter of Captain Peter Morton. Their daughter
was Mary, and, girls, she was the mother of one of our classmates, the
very same Mary who went through Hope and graduated with high honors.
You’ll find her initials carved in Number 10 across the hall, and her
portrait--the only one I could find--is in this graduating group.”
The girls all crowded forward to look at the group photograph which Kit
held out to them, just as a knock came at the door. For one dramatic
instant Kit held the knob, her back against the door as she announced
in almost a whisper, “The granddaughter of Malcolm Douglas.”
The girls leaned forward, eagerly, every eye fixed upon the door. As
Kit said later to Anne, “Goodness knows who they expected to see, but
I almost felt as though I had promised them a two-headed man, and then
had sprung Jeannette. Wasn’t she marvelous, Anne? The way she stood
the introduction and the shock of finding herself the guest of honor.
As I looked at her, I thought to myself, you may be Douglas, and you
may be Morton, fine old Scotch and English stock, but if it wasn’t for
the dash of debonair Flambeau in you too, you could never carry this
off the way you’re doing.”
Jeannette was not the only person present who had to fall back on
inherent caste for their manners of the moment, but Tony was the only
one that gave an audible gasp. Even Peggy and Georgia smiled, and
greeted the Founder’s granddaughter in the proper spirit.
She was dressed in a plain gray suit, but Kit gloried in the way she
took her place beside Virginia at the table, and answered the questions
of the girls with laughing ease.
“Of course,” she said, with the little slight accent she seemed to
have caught from her father and old Grandmother Flambeau, “I thought
everyone in Delphi knew. For myself, I am proud of him, and of all my
mother’s people, but I am also proud of being a Flambeau. You girls do
not know perhaps that some of my father’s people helped to found Fort
Dearborn, and they were very brave and courageous voyagers in the early
days of New France.”
Peggy really rose to the occasion remarkably, Kit thought. Probably
the most jealously guarded membership in the prep classes was that of
the Portia Club, and yet, before the tea was over, she had invited
Jeannette to attend the next meeting and be proposed for membership.
“We’re not going to try a whole play at first, just famous scenes,
and I know you’d fit in somewhere and enjoy it. Don’t you want to,
Jeannette?”
Jeannette shrugged her shoulders, and said, “I shall be glad to help
always, if you wish to make me one of you.”
“What do you think of that?” Anne said on the way home. “Kit, you
certainly have discovered a flower that was born to blush unseen.”
“It will take her out of her shell, anyway,” Kit replied happily. “And
I do think the girls came up to the mark splendidly. How I’d like to
hear what they’re saying about us now, behind our backs, but they acted
their parts nobly when I swung that door open, and there stood, just
Jeannette!”
12. Homesick
No qualms of homesickness visited Kit the first two months after school
opened. Not even New England could eclipse the glory of autumn when it
swept in full splendor over this corner of the Lake States. Down east
there was a sort of middle-aged relaxation to this season of the year.
But here autumn came as a gypsy. The stretches of forest that fringed
the ravines rioted in color. The lakes seemed to take on the very
deepest sapphire blue. No hush lay over the land as it did in the East,
but there were wild sudden storm flurries, a feeling in the air as if
there might be a regular tornado any minute.
Hardly a Saturday passed but what Kit was included in some fall picnic
hike or else she was off to a football game. The Dean never joined
these, but occasionally Della did and thoroughly enjoyed them. And
once, toward the end of November, in the very last of Indian summer
weather, they took a weekend tour up to Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls.
“I only wish,” Rex said, “that we could come up here next spring when
they have their big logging time. It’s one of the greatest sights you
ever saw, Kit. I have seen the logs jammed out there in the river until
they looked like a giant’s game of jackstraws. Maybe we could arrange a
trip, don’t you think so, Mom?”
“I don’t see any reason why not,” replied Mrs. Bellamy.
“But I won’t be here then,” protested Kit.
“Oh, you’ll stay till the end of the spring term, dear,” Della
corrected, and right then Kit experienced her first pang of
homesickness. Would she really be away from home until next June? Even
with this novelty of recreation, backed by wealth, she felt suddenly as
though she could have slipped away from it all without a single regret,
just to find herself safely back home with the family.
One weekend while Jean was home at Maple Grove, she and her mother
were talking together about Jean’s work. Doris and Tommy with Jack had
walked over to Woodhow to help Mr. Craig, so Jean and her mother were
alone.
Each time Jean came home she found herself turning with a sigh of
relief and safety from the city life to the peace of the hills. It was
her comment on this to her mother that had prompted their talk.
“Are you going to begin looking into job possibilities while you are in
New York, Jean?” asked her mother. “I think if you are really serious
about a career, you should begin getting interviews for a job next
year.”
“No Mom,” replied Jean. “I think I have reached an important decision.
I wasn’t going to tell you until my course was over and I was positive
I was right, but I’ll tell you now since you asked. I love Ralph more
than I do a career and if he asks me to marry him, I’ll say yes. I’ve
learned to analyze my feelings and I am quite sure my love for art is
only a hobby. To have a happy marriage like yours and Dad’s is, is the
most important thing I want.”
“You have made a wise and difficult decision, my dear,” said Mrs. Craig
tenderly. “Your father and I have felt all along that Ralph was ideally
suited for you, but we wanted you to make your own decisions first.”
Just then, the mailman brought Kit’s next letter and Jean read it over
her mother’s shoulder. A little puzzled frown drew Jean’s straight dark
brows together.
“She’s getting homesick, Mother. Kit never writes tenderly like that
unless she feels a heart throb. I never thought she’d last as long as
she has--”
But Mrs. Craig looked dubious.
“She seems to have made such a good impression. I hate to have her
spoil it by jumping back too soon. It’s such an opportunity for her.”
Jean stopped washing the dishes and gazed out of the kitchen window
toward the fields, where none but the crows could find a living now.
“I don’t blame her a bit if she wants to come back home before summer,
Mom. Money isn’t everything.”
“That’s true,” sighed her mother. “But it’s a shame not to take
advantage of it when it comes your way.”
“Just the same, if I were you, I’d write and tell Kit that she could
come home at the Christmas vacation if she wanted to.”
But Becky took an entirely different view of the matter when she was
consulted. “Fiddlesticks,” she said. “No girl of Kit’s age knows what
she wants two minutes of the time. She isn’t needed here at all,
Margaret. Doris is getting plenty old enough to take hold and help.”
So two letters went back to Kit, and in hers Mrs. Craig could not
resist slipping a hint that perhaps it would be a wise thing to ask the
Dean about ending her visit at Christmas time.
But Jean added in hers, “Mother’s afraid you are homesick, or that they
may be tired of you by this time, but if I were in your place, I’d try
to stay until June. Dad thinks the house may be done in time for us to
go into it next month, but we’ve had lots of wet weather, and Becky
says it would be horribly unhealthful to move in before the plaster has
had a chance to thoroughly dry. Matt goes down every day with Dad, and
they’ve kept the fire going in the furnace, so I suppose that will help
some, but there isn’t a particle of need for your coming back, except
Mother’s dread that you may be homesick, and you’re getting too old to
mollycoddle yourself, where there’s a big interest at stake.”
Kit read this with a frown. “It’s so nice to have been born Jean, and
speak on any subject as the oldest,” she said scornfully. “I know
perfectly well that Mom needs me when she is moving back into the new
house, and I never expected to stay so long when I came, anyway.”
She stopped short, meditating on just what this queer, choky feeling
was that had swept over her. She knew that she would have given up
everything, the new friends she had made, and all the winter’s fun at
Hope College, just to be safely back home.
13. Frank Apologizes
Kit was doing some homework in the library one Saturday morning, when
all at once she was conscious of someone who stood at the west end of
the room, looking at her. For a moment Kit was absolutely speechless,
not believing the evidence of her own eyes. But the next minute
Billie’s own laugh, when he found out he had been discovered, startled
her with its reality.
“Billie Ellis,” she exclaimed, springing to her feet and scattering
reference books and notepaper helter-skelter. “How on earth did you
ever get way out here?”
Billie colored slightly, as he always did at any display of emotion,
and tried to act as if it were the most natural and ordinary thing in
the world for him to appear at Delphi, when he was supposed to be in
Washington in school.
“We had our exams last week, and Frank had to come out to Minnesota for
the government, so he took me along to help him.”
“Billie, are you really after bugs and things--I mean, are you going to
really be a naturalist?”
“I guess you’d kind of call it being a business naturalist,” laughed
Billie. “I don’t think I’ll ever live in a shack on a mountainside, and
write beautiful things about them, now that I know Frank. You want to
roll up your sleeves and pitch in like he does.”
“Is he here now?” asked Kit eagerly.
“Yep.” Billie nodded out of the window toward Kemp Hall, the boys’
dormitory. “After we found out that you didn’t live here, we were
going on down to the Dean’s to find you, but he looked over the boys’
freshman class, and found he had a cousin or nephew or somebody on the
list, Clayton Diggs.”
“I know him,” Kit said. “He’s awfully nice. I’ve got to be back for
lunch, and you’re coming down with me, of course. How long can you
stay?”
“Just this afternoon. We’re going back on the five forty-five, and
catch the night express out of Chicago. If you wait here, I’ll chase
after Frank, ’cause he’ll want to have lunch with the Diggs boy, and he
can join us later.”
Kit walked along the path which crossed the campus. The coming of
Billie unexpectedly, just at a time when she was feeling her first
homesickness, struck Kit as a rare piece of luck. But with only five
hours to visit with him, she knew it would be all the harder after he
had gone. He joined her on a run as she reached the sidewalk, and they
hurried down to the Dean’s just in time for lunch. Kit beamed when she
introduced her friend from the hills to Della and the Dean.
“Don’t you remember, Uncle Bart,” she asked eagerly, “my talking about
Billie? Well, here he is.”
The Dean’s gray eyes twinkled as he surveyed Billie over the tops of
his glasses. “You come highly recommended, young man,” he said.
“You could have a lovely time studying over Uncle Bart’s Egyptian
Scarabs, Bill,” said Kit. “Weren’t you telling me something about
a place in China where they had a whole grove filled with sacred
silkworms, Aunt Della? You see, Billie’s main interest is insects and
birds.”
Miss Peabody smiled and nodded, looking from one young face to the
other. Never before had youngsters sat lunching at that table with her
and her brother in quite such a way. The Dean usually took his meals
in absolute silence when they were alone together, for he held that
desultory conversation disturbed his train of thought. But since Kit’s
coming, it had been impossible to check her flow of talk, until now
the Dean actually missed it if she happened not to be there.
After lunch they all went into the library to look over the Dean’s
newly arrived treasures, the Amenotaph urn and the statue of Annui.
“Well, gol-lee,” exclaimed Kit, as she stood before the plain, squat,
terra-cotta urn, “is that the royal urn? I expected to see something
enormous, like everything else that is wonderful and ancient in Egypt.”
“My dear,” the Dean replied happily as he bent down to trace the
curious, cuneiform markings that circled the urn. “This antedates the
time of the Captivity and Moses. I cannot tell positively, until I have
opened it and deciphered what I can of the papyrus rolls within. If it
should go back to Moses, it will be wonderful. I cannot believe that
it is contemporary with Nineveh. Della, you can recall how overjoyed I
was when we unearthed that library of precious clay under the Nineveh
mounds years ago. Think of reading something which was written by
living man several thousand years before that.”
“What fun it must have been,” Billie remarked. “If you wanted to write
anything in those days, you just picked up a handful of mud and made a
little brick out of it, and wrote away with a stick, didn’t you?”
“Stylus, my boy, stylus,” corrected the Dean absently. “Yes, it did
away with much of our modern detail.”
“Where’s the statue, Uncle Bart?” Kit asked.
“It’s just behind you, my dear. And it’s perfect. Perfect,” murmured
the Dean.
Kit turned, expecting to face one of the usual blandly smiling Egyptian
pieces of art, with a few wings scattered over it here and there. But
instead, there stood in the center of the table a strangely attenuated
figure about three feet high. It had a head that was a cross between
an intelligent antelope and a rather toplofty baby rat. Its arms were
extended at sharp angles, and seemed to be pointing in arch accusation
at someone. Wings spread fanwise from the shoulders, and its feet were
like those of a griffin.
“I never thought it would look just like that, did you, Billie?” Kit
asked confidentially, when they started back to the campus later.
“Well, I knew what to expect, because we’ve been going to the
Smithsonian Institute pretty often,” replied Billie. “Some of them look
worse than that. But they can’t beat our own Alaskan and Mexican ones.
I wonder what people were thinking about back in those days to worship
that sort of thing?”
But Kit caught sight of five of the girls just rounding the corner
and she waved to them to come over, much to Billie’s inward disgust.
While he thoroughly approved of Kit, he viewed the average girl with
indifference. But Kit introduced him in a casual manner which put him
at his ease, and when they started up the path, it was Tony Conyer who
had taken possession of Billie, and was interesting him by telling of
her father’s big stock farm in northern Wisconsin.
They found Frank Howard waiting for them outside the boys’ dorm and
Clayton was with him. The girls got Kit aside and Amy faced her
accusingly.
“You never told us a word about this boy,” she declared, “and all the
time you’ve had him up your sleeve. Explain please.”
Kit laughed at them and said, “Well, he’s a relative, if you must know.
He’s my father’s first cousin’s husband’s grandson. Now what are you
going to do about it?”
Rather mollified, the girls rejoined the boys on the steps in front
of the dorm. “I suppose Hope looks pretty small to you after the
universities back East,” Georgia said to Billie.
“Looks swell to me,” returned Billie. “I think you can have lots more
fun in a place like this than you can at the big schools. But don’t get
the idea I’m going to college now, I’m just at prep school and taking
up a few extra courses outside with Frank.”
“What kind of courses?” asked Georgia.
“Science and physics, but specially entomology and forestry. He’s in
government service. I wish I knew all he does. It’s wonderful to have a
friend like Frank.”
Kit was behind the others with Amy and Anne. Now that they had joined
the others, and the girls were talking about Frank also, she had become
strangely silent.
“You don’t know him very well, do you?” Amy asked. “I mean, he isn’t
related to you.”
Kit shook her head with bland indifference.
“He’s a friend of Billie’s. I only met him at home when he came to
chase a gypsy moth in Elmhurst.”
She did not add that with Tommy’s help and able cooperation, she had
managed to curtail the chase of the gypsy moth, temporarily, by holding
the chaser captive in the family corncrib, but she inwardly suspected
that Frank was remembering it. Every once in a while she caught him
looking at her, with a look of amused retrospection that made her
vaguely uncomfortable.
As they left the campus, Georgia, leading with Billie, took the street
that led to the bluffs overlooking the lake, and somehow or other in
the scramble down the narrow pathways, Kit found Frank at her elbow. No
one could have been more dignified or distant in her manner than Kit,
but Frank refused to be frozen out.
“I’ve just found out something, Kit,” he said genially. “I forgave you
long ago for locking me up in your corncrib and nearly landing me in
the local jail, but you don’t forgive me one bit for trespassing in
your berry patch.”