Chapter II: Part 2

“Mind?” repeated Rex. “Why, I think he’ll be perfectly delighted. My name is Rex Bellamy, Kit, and this is my sister, Anne. We’re next-door neighbors of the Dean and Miss Della, and as we happened to be coming in town today they asked us to be sure to meet your--” Here he hesitated.

“My brother,” laughed Kit. “Well, here I am, and I only hope that Mother’s letter reached them this morning, explaining everything. Of course, they did write for a boy, and it takes so long for a letter to get out here and be answered, that I told Mom and Dad I knew it would be perfectly all right for me to come instead. Don’t you think it will be?”

Anne’s blue eyes were full of merriment. “Oh, golly,” she exclaimed, “I do wish I could go back with you, so I could see their faces when they find out. Mother and I have been here in Chicago this summer and Rex has been living at home alone. We’ll be back in a week, so I’ll see you then, and anyway, we’re sure to visit back and forth. I’m awfully glad you’re a girl.”

“But I won’t be here all winter,” Kit answered. “I’ve only come for a couple of months. On trial, you see. Maybe it’ll be only a couple of days, if they’re terribly disappointed.” Anne exchanged quick glances with her brother and he smiled as he led the way to the car.

“You don’t know the elaborate plans the Dean has laid out for your education,” he said. “It will take you all winter long to live up to them, but I’m sure he won’t be disappointed.”

Kit had her own opinion about this, still it was impossible for her to feel apprehensive or unhappy, as the car sped over toward the Lake Shore Drive. The newness of everything after two years up in the Elmhurst hills was wonderfully stimulating. But it was not until they had left the city and river behind and had reached Lincoln Park that she really gave vent to her feelings. It was a wonderful day and the lake lay in sparkling ripples beyond the long stretch of shore.

“Are we going all the way in the car?” she asked.

Rex shook his head. “No, only as far as Evanston. We’ll drop Anne off, and have lunch with Mother and then catch the train to Delphi. I have an errand for the Dean out at the University.”

“Gee,” said Kit, “we lived right on the edge of Long Island Sound before we moved up to Connecticut, and ever since I was small I can remember going away somewhere to the seashore every summer, but I think your lake is ever so much more interesting than the ocean. Somehow it seems to belong to you more. I always felt with the ocean as if it just condescended to come over to my special beach, after it had rambled all over the world, and belonged to everybody.”

“But you have all the shells and the seaweed, and we haven’t,” argued Anne. “Before I ever went East, we had a couple of clam shells, just plain everyday round clam shells that had come from Cape May, and I used to think they were perfectly wonderful because they had belonged in the real ocean.”

After the rugged landscape of New England, Kit found this level land very attractive. They passed through one suburb after another, with the beautiful Drive following the curving shoreline out to Evanston. Here she caught her first glimpse of Northwestern University, its buildings showing picturesquely through the beautiful trees around the campus.

They left Rex at the main entrance and drove on to where Mrs. Bellamy was stopping. Mrs. Bellamy was filled with amusement when she heard the story of Kit’s substitution of herself for her brother that the Dean had asked for. She was a tall, slender woman with blonde hair and gray eyes, who seemed almost like an older sister of Anne’s. They were staying in a small apartment near the campus.

Early in the afternoon Rex returned, and they caught the 2:45 local to Delphi. Kit could hardly keep her eyes off the beautiful scenery they were passing through. Every now and then the rich blueness of the lake would flash through the trees in the distance, and to the west there stretched long level fields of prairie-land, dipping ravines that unexpectedly led into woodland. Gradually the bluffs heightened as they neared the Wisconsin line above Waukegan, and just beyond the state line, between the shore and the region of the small lakes, Oconomowoc and Delevan, they came suddenly upon Delphi. It stood high upon the bluff, its college dominating the shady serenity of its quiet avenues.

“The Dean doesn’t keep a car,” said Rex as they walked through the gray stone station. “Besides, he thought I was bringing a boy who would not mind the hike up the hill.”

“I don’t mind a bit,” replied Kit. “I like it. It seems good to find real hills after all. I thought everything out here was just flat. I do hope they won’t be watching for us. It will be ever so much easier if I can just walk in before they get any kind of a shock, don’t you think?”

Rex did not tell her which was the house until they came to the two tall poplars at the entrance to the drive. Kit caught the murmur of the waves as they broke on the shore below and lifted her chin eagerly.

“Oh, I like it,” she cried. “This is it, isn’t it? Isn’t it dreamy? I only hope they’ll let me stay.”

7. The House Under the Bluff

DEAR FAMILY,

I can’t stop to write separate letters tonight to all of you, because
I’m so full of Delphi that I can hardly think of anything else. First
of all, Rex met me at the train with his sister Anne. They live next
door and Rex is Uncle Bart’s pet educational proposition next to me.

Mother’s letter had not arrived and they were expecting Tommy any
moment, when Rex and I walked in on them, and right here I must
say they showed presence of mind. The Dean’s eyes twinkled as Rex
explained things, and then I kissed Aunt Della, and explained to her
too, and I’m sure that she was relieved. After Rex had gone, the Dean
took me into his study after dinner, and we had a long heart-to-heart
talk. I want you all to understand that he thinks I’m a good specimen
of the undeveloped female brain.

I am going to enter the preparatory class at the college in October,
and take what the Dean calls supplementary lessons from him along
special lines. I don’t quite know all that this means, but I guess I
can weather it. It probably has to do with cosmic makings (those were
Rex’s words) of geology and all sorts of prehistoric stuff. I know
the Dean mentioned one thing that began with a ‘paleo’ but I have
forgotten the rest of it. I’ll let you know later.

I have a perfectly darling room. It looks right out over Lake
Michigan. There’s a big square window to it that overhangs the edge
of the bluff like the balcony of a Spanish villa. Our garden just
topples right over into a ravine that ends up short on the shore. I
never saw such abrupt cliffs in my life. Uncle Bart was showing me
the layers of strata there that a little recent landslide had shown
up, and he says that the formation is just exactly like it is out in
Wyoming and Colorado.

Aunt Della is darling. It’s more fun to hear her tell of how she
worried over a boy coming into the family. The whole house is filled
from one end to the other with Uncle Bart’s treasures that he’s
been collecting for years. You’re liable to stumble over a stuffed
armadillo or a petrified slice of some prehistoric monster anywhere
at all. I found a mummy case in the library closet, but there wasn’t
anything in it at all, and I was awfully disappointed. I don’t know
but what I like it after all, although I miss you dreadfully. I don’t
even dare to think there are about a thousand miles between us.

So I won’t feel too out of touch with all of you, you must promise to
write me often. Jean, I want you to tell me all that you hear from
Ralph. I strongly suspect something is going on between you two, even
though you haven’t said anything about it to me. We always talked
things over together before, so now that I’m away we’ll have to do
the discussing by letter.

Doris, be sure to keep me posted on all the things you are doing at
school, and, Tommy, you are to give me the details on the progress of
rebuilding Woodhow.

If you will do this, I know I’ll feel as if I’m right there at home
and I won’t be homesick at all.

This is all I can write to you tonight because I’m so sleepy I can
hardly keep my eyes open. Aunt Della was just in to say good night.
She told me again how glad she is that I’m not a boy. Uncle Bart
hasn’t committed himself yet, but I think he’s curious about me
anyway. Good night all, and write me oodles of news.

Love,
Kit.

At the same time that Kit was writing home, the Dean and Della stepped out on the broad porch. Every evening about nine-thirty passersby might have seen the flickering glow of the Dean’s good-night cigar. His evening cigar was a sort of nocturnal ceremonial. It gave him an excuse to step out into the fragrant darkness of the garden walk for a quiet little stroll before bedtime, and usually Della joined him.

So tonight they walked together, discussing the girl with the dark curls who had come to them from far-off New England, instead of the boy they had sent for.

“There’s no reason,” remarked the Dean reflectively, “why the child should not have a pleasant visit, since she is here. I have had a long conversation with her, and while I could not say that she was exceptionally--er--”

“Bright,” suggested Della.

“I should like to call it intellectual,” the Dean said kindly, “she is keenly impressionable and self-reliant. I think I may be able to interest her, at least in a simplified course of study. I have always believed that boys were more able to accept routine discipline in education than girls, but we shall see.”

Della’s eyes, if he could only have seen them, held a twinkle of mirth, and her smile was a little more pronounced than usual.

“I think,” she said, softly, “that she is a very lovable, attractive girl. I am quite relieved, Barton, not to have a boy in the house.”

Kit woke up the following morning with the sunlight calling to her. It was early, but back on the farm she usually got up about six. There did not seem to be anyone stirring yet, so she dressed quietly, and found her way downstairs. The Dean kept a cook and gardener. Kit heard Carrie, the cook, singing in the dining room and went out at once to make friends with her.

“Is it very far down the bluff to the shore, Carrie?” she asked, eagerly. “I’m dying to climb down there, if I have time before breakfast.”

“Sure, Miss, it’s as easy as rolling off a log. You take the roundabout way through the garden, and the little path behind the tool shed, and you just follow it until you can’t go any farther, and there’s the bluff. I haven’t been down myself, but Dan says there’s a little path you take to the shore if you don’t mind scrambling a bit.”

Kit waved goodbye to her and went in search of the path. She found Dan, the gardener, raking up leaves in the garden. He was a plump, rosy-cheeked old Irishman, his face wrinkled like a winter apple, and he lifted his cap at her approach with a smile of frank curiosity and approval.

A half-grown black retriever came bounding to meet her, his nose and forepaws tipped with white.

“That’s a welcome he’s giving you you wouldn’t have had if you’d been a boy, Miss,” Dan said shrewdly. “I’m glad to meet you and hope you’ll like it here.”

Kit was stroking Sandy’s head. His real name, Dan told her, was Lysander. Anything that the Dean had the naming of received the benediction of ancient Greece, but Sandy, in his puppyhood, had managed to acquire a happy nickname.

“I don’t see,” Kit said laughing, “why you dreaded a boy coming. I know some awfully nice boys back home, and there’s one especially, named Buzzy. He’s out West now. I think he’s just the kind of a boy the Dean expected to see, but perhaps he’ll get used to me. Do you think he will?”

“Sure he will,” answered Dan. “If you leave it to Sandy to find the shore, he’ll take you the quickest way.”

Everything was so different from the Connecticut countryside. Instead of the thick, lush growth which came from richly watered black loam, here one found sand cherries and dwarf willows and beeches springing up from the sand. Tall sword grass waved almost like Becky’s striped ribbon grass in her home garden, and wild sunflowers showed like golden glow here and there.

The beach was level and rockless, different entirely from the Eastern Atlantic shores, but the sand was beautifully white and fine, and there were great weatherbeaten, wave-washed boulders lying half-buried in the sand, also trunks of trees, their roots sticking out grotesquely like the heads of strange animals. Kit thought to herself how the Dean might have added them with profit to his prehistoric collection. There was no glimpse or hint of the town to be seen down here. Not even a boathouse, only one long pier. About a mile and a half from shore was a lighthouse, and farther out a dark freighter showed in perfect outline against the blueness of the morning sky.

Kit followed Sandy’s lead, hardly realizing the distance she was covering, until he suddenly disappeared behind a headland. When she rounded it, she saw a cottage built close under the shelter of the bluff. The sand drifted like snow halfway up to its windows. It had been painted red once, but now its old clapboards were the color of sorrel, and weatherbeaten and wave-washed like the boulders. There were fish nets drying on tall staples driven in behind a couple of overturned rowboats, and at that first glimpse it seemed to her as if there were children everywhere. Four strong boys from fourteen to eighteen worked over the nets, mending them. Around the back door there were four or five more, and sitting in the sunlight in a low rocking chair was an old woman.

Sandy seemed to greet them as old acquaintances, so Kit called good morning in her friendly way. The boys eyed her, and all of the children scurried like a flock of startled chickens as she came up the boardwalk to the kitchen door, but the old grandmother kept serenely on paring potatoes, calm-eyed and unembarrassed.

“How do you do?” said Kit, and she smiled. “I’m Dean Peabody’s grandniece. I just came here yesterday, and Sandy brought me here this morning. I didn’t know where he was going, but he seemed to know the way.”

The old woman’s brown eyes followed the movement of the dog. “He’s very fine, that dog,” she said deliberately. “He comes very often, I’ve known him since he was _un petit chien_, very small pup--so big.” She measured with her hand from the ground.

“Do you know the Dean?” Kit asked, sitting down on the doorstep beside her. “He lives up in the big house on the bluff, where the pine and maples are.”

The old woman shook her head placidly. “I not go up that bluff in forty-eight years.”

Kit’s eyes widened with quick interest. Just then a girl a little older than herself came out of the kitchen door. Two pigtails of straight brown hair hung to her shoulders, and her dress was gypsy-like. She looked at Kit with quiet, steady scrutiny, and then questioningly over at the boys. But Kit herself relieved the tension.

“Hi,” she said. “I think you’ve got an awfully nice place down here. I like it because it looks old like our houses back home. All the other places I’ve seen since I came out here have looked so newly-painted.”

“This isn’t new,” the girl told her slowly. “This place belonged to my grandfather’s father, Charles Flambeau. There were Indians around here then. Most of them Ojibways.”

Kit’s curiosity was aroused by this entirely new field of adventure to be uncovered. The wonderful old grandmother, basking in the sun with memories of the past. The strong, tanned boys working at the nets, the flock of dark-skinned youngsters, and the girl, Jeannette, whom she was to know so well before her stay in Delphi was over.

She hurried back, eager to ask questions about the Flambeaus, and found herself late for breakfast the very first morning she was there. The Dean’s face was a study as she entered, and Della’s fingers fluttered nervously over the coffee pot and cups. Kit was out of breath, and so full of excitement that she did not even notice the air was chill.

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful time,” she began. “No coffee, Aunt Della, please. It’s all Sandy’s fault. I just wanted to run down the bluff to the shore, and he led me way around that headland to the quaintest old house, half-sunken in the sand, and I got acquainted with the old grandmother and Jeannette. The boys and the little kids seemed half-scared to death at the sight of me, and so I didn’t bother to get acquainted with them yet.”

The Dean looked up at her over his glasses with a quizzical expression, and Della fairly caught her breath.

“The Flambeaus on the shore, my dear?” she asked. “Those half-breed French Canadians?”

“Well, I didn’t know just what they were,” answered Kit cheerfully, “but I think they’re awfully interesting. Don’t you think that they look like the Breton fishermen in some of the old French paintings?”

“The Flambeaus have not a very good reputation, my dear,” the Dean coughed slightly behind his hand as he spoke. “The present generation may be law-abiding, but even within my memory, the Flambeaus had a little habit of stealing.”

“Stealing?” repeated Kit.

“Yes, fishing tackle and that sort of thing. Besides, there is the Indian strain in them, and they are squatters. There have been several lawsuits against them, and they have persisted in staying there on the shore when the property owners on the bluff distinctly purchased shore rights.”

“But, Bart, the Flambeaus won all their suits, didn’t they?” asked Della pleasantly. “I’m sure the older boys are very industrious, and I think the girl Jeanette is strikingly attractive. You’re not really forbidding Kit to go down there, I’m sure.”

The Dean said something that was lost in a murmur, for he had been one of the property owners defeated in the lawsuits by the Flambeaus. After breakfast Kit went upstairs with Della into her own little sitting room. This looked toward the street, out over the maple and pine-shaded lawn. Also, it commanded a good view of the college. This was built of gray stone and was overgrown with woodbine just beginning to show a tinge of crimson.

“It seems awfully queer, Aunt Della,” Kit said as she leaned out of the window, “to think that I’m going there into the prep class. Rex said on the way up here--”

She leaned suddenly farther out and waved. “Hi, Rex, are you coming over?”

Rex glanced up at the radiant face as he came along the hedge-bordered drive between his home and the Dean’s and waved back in neighborly fashion.

“I’m going up to the campus now,” he said. “Ask Miss Della if she’d let you be in the dramatic club. There’s a meeting this morning.”

“Could I, Aunt Della? Please say yes. I’m dying to join something. I haven’t joined anything in ages,” Kit begged. “I can meet everyone and get acquainted. If you don’t need me this morning--” She hesitated, but some of her enthusiasm had caught Della, and she immediately succumbed to the whim of the moment.

“Why, I don’t see why not. You go on down with Rex if you want to.”

The Dean’s desk stood overlooking the driveway. He had settled down to his morning’s portion of work and was blocking out a curriculum of study for Kit, when he happened to glance up, and saw the two passing gayly through the gates. Certainly he did not realize at that moment that already the spirit of youth was at work in the old shadowy house behind the pines.

8. A Square Deal

The first batch of family letters arrived the following week. Kit nearly knocked the mailman over as he came up the walk, for she had been watching anxiously at each delivery. After all, it was the first time she had been away from home, and after the first excitement and novelty had worn off, her heart ached for news from home.

It seemed the Dean had written to her father on the night of her arrival, and this was a surprise to Kit.

“It is a great relief to us all to know that you have made such a favorable impression,” Mr. Craig’s letter read. “After all, it was an experiment, and I confess that I was rather skeptical of the result, knowing the Dean as I do. Try to adapt yourself as much as possible to their life there, Kit. You must be considerate of all the Dean’s notions, and make yourself as useful as you can while you are with them.

“The rebuilding of the house is going along splendidly, and we hope to have our Christmas there. I have followed the old plan, but with some improvements, I think, putting in a good furnace, and enlarging the dining room and kitchen. There will be an outdoor fireplace on the west side of the house also, and I know you will enjoy this.”

Enjoy it? Kit stared ahead of her at the shady lawn. Della was bending over nasturtium beds gathering black seeds, but instead, Kit saw in a vision a great hickory fire burning brightly against a black sky. Her mother’s letter came next. Kit read it with delight. She could tell just exactly the mood her mother was in when she wrote, just how her conscience pricked her for having been a party to Kit’s plan.

“Of course, while the Dean’s letter was very nice, still I am sure he felt put upon. I am ever so sorry that we did not write sooner, and tell them that you were coming. It rests with you now, Kit, to make yourself so adaptable that they will forget all about wanting a boy. I have no objection to your staying for the winter term at Hope College. Between ourselves, dear, our plans are a little unsettled. Dad is certain that the house will be ready for us this winter, but you know how slowly the carpenters work.

“Make all the friends that you possibly can. You won’t realize it now, but so many of these friendships become precious lifelong ones. Billie is leaving this week for school. You remember Frank Howard, who came to look after our trees? He has been staying up at the Judge’s, and took a great interest in Billie. Instead of going back to the school he went to last year, Billie is going on to a school in Virginia, not far from Washington, that Frank suggested sending him to. He is a great believer in the value of environment that is associated with historic traditions.”

Kit read this last over twice, but could not agree with it at all. She had always liked the pioneer outlook, the longing to break new trails, the starting of little colonies in clearings of one’s own making. If there was an ivy around her castle, she wanted to plant it herself.

“Historic tradition?” repeated Kit. “When all around here are the old Indian trails, and the footprints left by the French explorers. I just wish I could get Billie out here for a little while. He’ll settle down in some old school that thinks it is wonderful because John Smith built a campfire on its site once upon a time, or Pocahontas planted corn in its football field.”

Kit sighed, tucked her mother’s and father’s letters in her suit pocket and started off for her favorite lookout point on the bluff. Here, with Sandy crouching at her feet, she read the three letters from Doris, Jean, and Tommy. Jean’s was full of plans for going to New York again. Beth, their cousin with whom Jean had stayed the previous winter, had promised her three months at the Art Academy.

“I’m so excited to be going back to New York again. I had a letter from Ralph today and he asked me again if I had decided on an art career. I don’t know what to tell him, but I am going to study this winter anyway. Maybe I’ll find out this year whether it is worthwhile for me to go on or not. I do know that I love Ralph, but I still have that ambition to do something really important with my life. With the exception of my one trip to New York last year, I have never done anything on my own. Perhaps what I mean is, I want to be independent.

“I shall be coming home weekends this year so I can help Mother and Dad with the rebuilding plans. Besides, I do like living in the country more than the city and it’s more for the studying I’m going to do there that I want to go back to New York.”

Kit glanced over the rest of the letter hurriedly. Becky had given a 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.”