Kit went into the back parlor and lifted the urn from the piano very carefully, carrying it out to its customary place on the Dean's desk. Then she stood staring at it, reflectively. It certainly was not exactly a thing of beauty, although, as the Dean had pointed out to her, one saw the influence of Grecian art in its graceful lines. It always reminded Kit of Indian pottery down among the Zunis and Mexicans.

"What does the inscription say?" Kit leaned forward anxiously.

"It merely traces the origin of King Amenotaph to the god Thoth," said the Dean, thoughtfully; "that is, the Egyptian Hermes, or Mercury, as we know him, and it is extremely vague, being a curious mixture of the Coptic and the ancient Aramaic."

"But what does it say?" asked Kit again.

The Dean followed the curious markings on the urn with his finger-tip, bending forward and peering over the rims of his tortoise-shell glasses.

"It says, 'Amenotaph, born of Thoth, shall reign in wisdom. Kings shall serve at his footstool. Ra shall shine upon him. He shall lie in peace, encompassed by Ra.'"

"Is that all?"

"That is all," sighed the Dean. "It seems merely a laudatory sentiment."

"Who was Ra?" asked Kit, curiously, running her hand around the top of the urn.

"The Sun god. His symbol was the circle. You see it here."

Kit repeated again, slowly:

"'He shall lie in peace, encompassed by Ra,' That means surrounded by Ra, doesn't it, Uncle Cassius?" She picked up the um in both hands and shook it close to her ear.

"My dear child, do be careful," cried the Dean; "it is priceless."

But Kit put it under one arm as though it had been a milk pail and tapped around the inside with her knuckles, listening.

"That's a perfectly good hollow jug," she said, solemnly. "Just you tap it, and listen, uncle. I'll bet a cookie they've hidden something inside the outside and that Ra has guarded it all these years."

"Just a moment, just a moment, my dear," exclaimed the Dean, smiling like a happy boy. "You've given me an idea. This may be a cryptogram, or an ideographic cypher. Just a moment, now; don't speak to me."

He sat down at the desk and figured laboriously for nearly twenty minutes, working out the inscription in cypher, while Kit stared at him delightedly. After all, it was rather gratifying, she thought, to have somebody in the family who could take a little remark made thousands of years ago in old Egypt and make sense out of it to-day. She waited patiently until he had finished. His hands were trembling as he reached for the urn.

"The circle," he repeated, "the circle. 'Ra in his circle shall guard Amenotaph.' The secret lies in the circle, Kit. Do you suppose it could mean the rim of the urn?"

Kit knelt beside him, following the inscription on the outside of the urn carefully with her finger-tip, the same as the Dean had done, and stopping when she came to a small circle in black and red outline.

"Do you suppose Ra lives here, Uncle Cassius?" she asked, poking at it thoughtfully. She peered on the inner side at the corresponding spot to the circle, and gave a little cry of excitement. There was the faintest sign of a circle here also, like one of the age cracks on Cousin Roxy's antique china. "See," she cried. "When you push on this side, the other gives a little bit."

The Dean could not speak. He took the urn from her over to the window and carefully examined the inner circle through a microscope.

"Yes," he said, fervently, "you are perfectly right, my dear. The circle moves. I think I shall have to take it to Washington on our way east. I would not take the responsibility of trying to remove it myself."

"Oh, dear, it seems awful to have to wait so long," Kit exclaimed, regretfully. "You know it seemed to me as if you could just press it through with your thumb, like this."

She had not intended pressing so hard, but merely to show him what she meant, and lo, as Cousin Roxy would have said, under the pressure of Kit's strong, young, capable thumb, the circle of Ra depressed and pushed slowly through, just exactly as Kit told the girls long afterwards, like when you plug a watermelon. The Dean looked on in utter amazement, as Kit lifted the urn and tested the inner section by shaking it. Then she peered into the circular hole, about the size of a quarter. The urn was fully two inches thick, and by inserting her finger into the space she found that it was made in two sections, with enough room between for a place of concealment.

"There's something in here like asbestos, Uncle Cassius," she began, and turning the urn upside down, she tried shaking it, using a little pressure on the circle to separate the two rims. Slowly they gave, while the Dean hovered over her, cautioning and directing the operation, until two complete urns lay before them. But it was not these which the Dean literally snatched at. It was the curious cap-shaped mass which fell out in the form of a cone. To Kit it appeared to be of no significance whatever, but the Dean handled it as tenderly as a new-born infant, and under his deft and tender touch it unrolled in long scrolls of papyrus.

The Dean rose to his feet solemnly, and his voice was hushed, as he said:

"Kit, you do not know what you have done. Some day the significance of this occasion will recur to you. All I can say is that you have lifted the veil of the past, and revealed the secret of Amenotaph."



CHAPTER XXII

HEADED FOR GILEAD

It was very hard for Kit to keep her mind on Orlando that evening, between the excitement of the coming trip and the revelation of the urn. But after it was over the girls clustered around her for one last send-off, and she realized then how closely the ties of friendship had been cemented in her few months at Hope.

She looked around at them with eyes filled with tears, and Kit was not at all of the crying type, but it seemed as if each girl of her own special crowd had filled a particular niche in her life for the time being. There was Charity, with her eye-glasses, and placid face, upturned smiling lips and quizzical eyes. How often she had taken the edge off Kit's rancor and indignation with just a few timely, humorous words. Amy, Norma, Peggy, and High Jinks had been the starters in all kinds of fun and recreation, while Anne had seemed to come the nearest to her of them all in actual comradeship. Then last of all, Marcelle. It was she who clasped Kit's hand, as she repeated in her low voice:

"While the grass grows and the waters run, so long shall we be friends."

"For pity's sakes, girls," exclaimed Miss Daphne, "don't act as if you were never going to see her again. I shall see that she comes back in vacation next year, because the Dean and I couldn't possibly do without her, now."

Just before it was time to leave for the train Monday morning, Rex and Anne brought over their farewell gift.

"It's supposed to be like a steamer basket," Anne said, "only this is a train basket. We figured on your being on the train for at least two days, if you do happen to stop over in Washington."

Kit did not open it until they boarded the limited in Chicago and were well on their way, speeding eastward. There was no sign of snow as yet, but the land seemed to lie locked in a frosty grip of barrenness. The Dean seemed to smile perpetually now. He occupied the lower part of the section across the aisle, and Kit loved to watch him as he sat by the window, his little black skullcap making him look like a portrait of an old-time French savant. Every now and then he would glance up and meet her eyes with a little smile of mutual understanding. It was as if they, too, were united in a close bond of sympathy, ever since they had solved the mystery of Amenotaph and Ra's circle.

When lunch time drew near Kit opened the train basket. There were fruit and home-made preserves, little tempting jars of sweet pickles and stuffed olives, home-made fruit cake and jars of club cheese with thin wafers that just matched them. The girls at Hope had sent down five pounds of fudge as a parting gift to be included in the basket, but best of all, Kit thought, was a young wild turkey, roasted to perfection, and stuffed with chestnuts.

"Isn't this just like Anne!" Kit exclaimed, exultantly. "She knows how I love to nibble on good things to eat. Now we won't have to go into the dining-car for lunch, and it will seem like a regular picnic having it here."

The Dean was like a boy in his enjoyment of the unconventional luncheon. He ordered a wonderful salad as his share and a pot of French cocoa.

"Doesn't this remind you, Daphne, of some of the basket luncheons we used to have in England and France years ago?" he said, happily.

"Cousin Beth told us last year about a party she was with that went to the North Cape," Kit related, "and just when they were all transfixed by the majesty of the midnight sun one of the ladies said it was the most unique experience of her whole life, eating crackers and cheese on the North Cape."

"She would have left peanut shells on Fujiyama," the Dean replied, gravely.

They reached Washington the following day, and here the weather was even milder, with almost a touch of autumn left in the air. Christmas was Thursday, and Kit had pleaded for them not to miss Christmas Eve at home, so while the Dean took the urn up to the Institute, and left his records there, Miss Daphne and Kit spent nearly four hours driving around the city and visiting famous points of interest.

"Be sure and take a taxi, so you'll cover more ground," the Dean suggested when he left them, but Kit could not resist the beaming smile of one of the old-time darky coachmen, who sat drowsing on the seat of an open victoria outside the Capitol grounds. He was dressed in an old Colonial blue livery, with a tall silk hat, curving out at the top like those of the seventies.

"But, Aunt Daphne, doesn't he act just exactly as though he had been a retainer in our honored family for generations?" Kit regarded his back with distinct approbation as they drove along Pennsylvania Avenue, and when the old fellow raised his whip in salute to every other old retainer perched on the box of a victoria that they met, she was delighted.

The Dean joined them for dinner at one of the old exclusive hotels in the White House section of town, and here Kit fairly reveled in the general atmosphere of diplomatic tone. She sighed involuntarily, watching a very beautiful woman who sat at an adjoining table, when she extended her hand in greeting to two foreign-appearing gentlemen in uniform, and they both bowed over it and kissed it.

"That's the Continental custom, my dear," Miss Daphne murmured.

"Oh, dear, I wish they'd do it here still," Kit said. "It makes one think of powdered hair and lovely, flouncy hoop skirts. I'm going to practice it when I get home."

It was not until they took the through train from Washington for New London that Kit relaxed. It was the last home stretch, and now that the end of the journey drew near, the full importance of the Dean's visit at such a time grew upon her. The little hint she had given about the guest chamber being ready was the only thing that would have made the family suspect she was bringing any guests with her. Not a word had been sent to notify them of their arrival, but the last two hours in Washington had been given up to the purchasing of gifts, and Kit had looked positively dazed when the Dean handed her twenty-five dollars with the remark:

"You'll want to buy a few little things too, my dear."

A few little things. Kit wondered if he had any idea at all of how little cash had figured in the purchasing of home gifts at Greenacres the past two years.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE DEAN SEES THE STAR

They arrived at Nantic a little past noon, after leaving Washington on the midnight express. There was no stop-over at New York in the morning, the train going straight through to New England, and here they found the first snowstorm.

"There are the old gray rock walls, bless them," exclaimed the Dean, delightedly, "and the evergreens. The west may keep its towering white pines, but give me the old hemlocks and junipers, with the birches and oaks behind them."

Kit was so glad to see Mr. Briggs' smiling face on the platform at Nantic that she almost threw her arms around him, as she jumped from the platform of the train.

"Well, well," he ejaculated, "didn't expect to see you around so soon, Miss Robbins. Come to stay a while? Brought company with you, too, didn't you? Home folks or just visitors?"

"Home folks," said the Dean, directly behind them, as he extended his hand, "who haven't been home in thirty years."

"You don't say so," Mr. Briggs smiled at him, curiously. "Well, you won't find many things changed around here in only that time. Want me to 'phone over for a rig to take you up? The Robbinses are settled in the Hall now. Shouldn't wonder if it was kind of damp there yet. Had quite a spell 'round here of rainy weather before the frost set in. Looks as if 'twas going to stay in for a spell of snow now, though. Some boxes came up from New York yesterday for your folks, but I couldn't tell what was in 'em off-hand. Felt sort of hefty, though."

"It seems so good," Kit said, fervently, as he moved away from them out of hearing, "to be around where even the baggage man knows all about you, and takes an interest in everything. People don't do that out west, do they, Uncle Cassius? Not even in a little place like Delphi. I wonder if any one will remember you."

Perhaps the Dean was wondering the same thing as they drove up through the old hill road towards Gilead. One by one he recognized the old familiar landmarks and farms as they passed them, but Miss Daphne was far too engrossed in watching the Dean's own face to care for familiar spots on the landscape.

It was not until they got up near the Peckham mill that they met any of the old neighbors, but here Mr. Peckham himself came leisurely down from the mill path to the bridge and hailed Kit.

"Howdy, Kit. Home for Christmas?" he called cheerily, then taking a good look at the other occupants of the old station surrey, "Well, Cass Peabody, who in creation ever thought of seeing you around these parts again."

The Dean leaned forward, peering over the tops of his glasses with almost the smile of a boy.

"It's Dan Peckham, isn't it?" he said. "Yours is the first voice to welcome me home, Dan."

Mr. Peckham insisted on their waiting a moment while he hurried up to the house to call Elvira. Kit sat back in the carriage enjoying the reunion. Miss Daphne had gone to school years before at the Select Academy for Young Ladies, over in Willimantic, with Elvira Evans long before she became Mrs. Peckham. Kit felt, listening to the four of them go over dear old reminiscences, that it was as though she stood at the curtain of the past, on tiptoe at a peep-hole.

The early twilight had already begun to set in by the time they reached the turn of the road below the Greenacre entrance gates. On the silent, frosty air, Kit heard Shad's clear whistle, and over the fringe of pines along the river there came the murmur of the waterfall. There was none of the family in sight when they turned up the drive, but suddenly Kit's eager eyes saw a familiar figure out by the chicken coops, and leaning forward she gave a shrill co-oee!

Doris' head went up like a startled deer. She dropped the pan of feed to the ground and fairly flew to meet them, and then before Kit could even detach herself from these clinging arms, the big front door swung open, and there in the lamplight was the Mother Bird and Helen.

Jean was up-stairs as usual at this hour when she was home, reading with her father, but Kit never forgot the feeling of relief that came to her when she finally found herself before the open fire in the big living-room with all of the family around her, and the full satisfaction of having brought home the Peabodys after all these years of estrangement.

That night, after dinner, while Shad and the Dean were closeted in the big front room erecting the huge hemlock Christmas tree, the girls assembled in Jean's room.

"Cousin Roxy invited us all over to their place," Helen said, as she dove into a lower bureau drawer, filled with carefully wrapped parcels, "but mother wanted to have a home Christmas, because the house does seem new to us all, and we never expected to see you home at all."

"You didn't? Well, I wrote and told you to be sure and have the guest chamber ready. I didn't know myself that Uncle Cassius and Aunt Daphne were coming until the last minute." Kit sat perched on the bed in a pink kimono, brushing her hair. And just at this moment she caught Jean's eye in the mirror, such an amused, knowing eye that Kit caught the full significance of that glance immediately, and laughed.

"I suppose you feel as though you had brought home the wealth of the Indies, Kit Robbins. You can't tell me that it wasn't intentional, because I know you. All I want to know is, who told you?"

"Told me what?" asked Kit innocently. Not for worlds would she have betrayed Cousin Roxy's confidence. "Any one to hear you talk, Jean, would think that you didn't want to see me at all."

Jean laughed. It was impossible to get past Kit's wall of evasion when she chose to take refuge behind it.

"Well, never mind how it has happened," she said happily. "I'm sure that you managed it in some way, and I can tell you right now, it has happened in the nick of time. You have no idea, Kit, how I have dreaded going back to the city and leaving things as they are. Dad seems to get so discouraged now when matters go wrong, and that throws the load of keeping up right on mother's shoulders."

"I know it," Kit rejoined, "but if it's anything to you all, I'd be willing to bet anything that right this minute Uncle Cassius is springing some glad tidings down-stairs that will turn the tide of fortune."

"Oh, Kit," begged Doris, "don't you and Jean talk like that, because I can't understand what you're driving at; tell it all out at once."

But Kit only slipped from the bed, and started to dance around the room provokingly, with many mysterious gestures.

"Supposing, curious damsel, that I were to speak unto you in the mystic language of past ages, and say that this windfall has come to the robins' nest out of the tomb of Amenotaph, out of the desert of Ra, supposing," she had to stop and chuckle at the look of utter astonishment on Doris' round eager face, "supposing I was to tell you that Annui had smiled upon the revelation, and that the sacred circle had given up its secret at the punch of your sister's delicate thumb. You see, even when I tell you, you don't understand, so you'll just have to wait until Uncle Cassius himself tells the story."

"Kit, you poor child," Jean exclaimed, laughingly, "you're raving. They'll have the tree up by now, and it's long after ten. Mother said that we were to take turns going down in the dark and putting our presents wherever we wanted to."

"I want to be last of all," Kit announced. "Doris, you come on in my room and help me wrap and tie the bundles. Good-night, sweet sisters; happy dreams."

But for the next hour after the lights went out, strange, flitting figures slipped through the halls and down-stairs into the front room, where the giant hemlock stood. And the very last one of all was clad in a bath robe and wore a black skullcap.

Perhaps no one in all Gilead, or indeed wherever the message of the angels might reach in the hearts of men that night, had grasped the inner meaning of their song as the old Dean. He had just finished placing his gifts upon the tree, and was turning to leave, when suddenly from the room above, where Jean and Helen slept, there came a wonderful sound. The old clock down the hall was striking midnight, and keeping to the custom of those fortunate enough to have been born in the Robbins family, the girls had opened their windows to the silent moonlit glory of the night, and sang in chorus:

"Oh, come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, Oh, come ye, oh, come ye to Bethlehem, Come and behold Him, born the King of Angels, Oh, come let us adore Him, Oh, come let us adore Him, Oh, come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord."

The Dean knelt in prayer beside the Christmas tree.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE TENTS OF GREENACRES

If it had not been for the opening of Hope College the week after New Years, Miss Daphne declared, for her part, she would not have gone back to Delphi until she had at least seen the arbutus bloom again in April. After Christmas at Greenacres, Cousin Roxy insisted on both her and the Dean visiting at Elmhurst, but before they left, the Dean had unfolded his plan.

"Daphne is well provided for in case of my passing over," he said, genially and unexpectedly, the last evening he was with them, "and I have been thinking a good deal lately over what Kit has well named the folly of 'dead men's shoes.'" He turned to where Mr. Robbins sat on the opposite side of the round library table, nearest the fire. "So I've taken the liberty, Jerry, of making over to you now what you would have had inevitably some day. Don't say anything, please. It's a personal indulgence on my part. I want to see, while I am alive, just exactly how much happiness it will bring you and yours. It is all well invested, but you may do as you like with it. I would suggest that you would live on the income, and stop worrying."

And when both Mr. Robbins and the Mother Bird tried to expostulate, the Dean only laughed at them, brushing their arguments aside.

"Why, if I were to turn over everything I own to the clan of Robbins, I could hardly pay back all that Kit has done for me. I'm a new man, Jerry. Sometimes I feel like a prehistoric toad just released from a clay-bank and blinking in the sunlight. Not only has she taught me the joy of living, but through her ingenuity she brought about one of the greatest discoveries that has been made in years on ancient Egypt. I feel guilty in taking any credit for it whatsoever, for while I was groping blindly after the solution, she put her finger, as it were, on the whole source of the trouble."

After they had returned west, and Jean had gone back to New York, Kit found her opportunity of laying her summer plan before her mother and father.

"There are acres and acres here that we never use at all. All that wonderful land on both sides of the river up through the valley, and the two islands besides. What I thought we could do was this, if you could just let us girls manage it. Couldn't we start a regular tent colony? Jean was telling me before she left about an artists' colony up in the Catskills, where they have tents fitted up for light housekeeping, and I'm sure we could do it here."

It had taken much argument and figuring on paper before the consent of both was won, but Cousin Roxy approved of the scheme highly.

"Land alive, Elizabeth Ann," she exclaimed, heartily, "don't crush anything that looks like budding initiative in your girls. I'd let them put tents all over the place until it blossomed like the wilderness. There's a stack of old furniture up in the garret at Maple Lawn and over at Elmhurst, too, and they're welcome to it. Get some pots of paint in and go to work, girls."

Kit acted immediately on the suggestion and drove up with Shad to look over the collection of discarded antiques in the two garrets. What she liked best of all were the three-drawer, old-fashioned chests and hand-made wooden chairs. There were ewer stands also, and several old single slat bedsteads.

"We're going to paint them all over, mother dear, in the loveliest yellows and grays, and Shad says that it won't be any trick at all for him to build the floors for us, and he says he can fix up little hanging-cupboards like they have in the tea-rooms, don't you know, to hold a few plates and dishes for light housekeeping."

"I don't see what else we're going to need," Helen put in, thoughtfully, "except the finishing touches, and I can add those. They'll need some jars for wild flowers and cushions and little things like that."

"Well, don't forget that they'll have to eat some time," Cousin Roxy remarked. "Get some two-burner oil stoves and folding tables and camp chairs, or if you want to be real rustic and quaint, have Shad here knock some white birch ones together, and probably the city folks will admire them more than anything you could buy. Lay in a stock of candles and bracket lamps. I'd make them bring up their own bedding if I were you, 'cause that would be the only nuisance you'd have to contend with."

"It's too bad," Kit said, reflectively, "that we're so far away from any kind of stores. I'm planning on eight tents all together, and there'll be ever so many things people will want to buy. Do you suppose, mother, that Mr. Peckham would let Sally manage anything like that up here? She's just dying to do something besides housework all her life."

"But where would you put her, dear?"

"Put her in another tent, if we couldn't do anything else, but I'll bet a cookie the boys down there at the mill could throw together a perfectly dandy little slab shack with birch trimmings. They could either have it down by the mill or put it right here at the crossroads. Sally could put in all kinds of supplies, kodaks and phonographs and post-cards and candy."

"Better put in a few canned goods, too, and staples," added Cousin Roxy. "I declare, I'd kind of like to have a hand in that myself. I'd put Cynthy to work right away at home bakery goods. Kit, I do believe, child, you've started something that may waken Gilead out of its Rip Van Winkle slumber."

Kit thought so too before she had half started the winter's work. Shad became a tower of strength when it came to painting the old furniture. They took one of the large upper chambers that was unoccupied, and set up a stove to keep it warm. Helen called it the atelier, but it was more like a paint shop before Shad finished.

Jean did her share by sending up some stencils she had designed herself for the backs of the chairs and panels in the chests and headboards.

"They look just exactly like the painted furniture you see in the New York shops," Cousin Roxy declared, the first time she inspected the results. "When the Judge and I were down before Christmas, I saw a little dining-room set that looked kind of cute, although it wasn't anything but plain gray with a few morning-glory vines trailing over it. I think you've done splendidly, girls. You've set your hand to the plow and started some fine deep furrows. But just remember, it's a long way around a ten-acre lot, so faint not in the heat of the day."

Kit herself attacked the problem of winning over the Peckhams to her idea of Sally's taking charge of a little store at the crossroads. Sally herself sat with wide anxious eyes on the extreme edge of a black haircloth armchair, while her mother said over and over again it was utterly impossible.

"Why, I couldn't get along without Sally, especially in the summer, with all the fruit to put up and the young ones home from school."

"But, Mrs. Peckham," pleaded Kit, "when you were Sally's age, wasn't there ever anything that you wanted to do or be with all your heart and soul? Didn't you ever just want to get away from what you had been doing for years, and start something new?"

"Well, come to think of it now," smiled Mrs. Peckham, "I'd have given my eye-teeth to have left home and gone to be a teacher in some town."

"Then please let Sally do this. Cousin Roxy says she's willing to keep an eye over everything, and one of us girls will probably be helping her out most of the time, too. It would only be until the middle of September, although if it wasn't too cold later on, we might be able to rent the tents and outfits to the hunters when they come up. Piney'll be home for vacation and Elvy and Sylvy can help you. They're eight years old now, and Anne's fifteen and Charlotte's twelve. Why, it isn't fair to them to let them think all Sally's good for is to stay at home and do housework. You will let her go, won't you, Mrs. Peckham?"

Mrs. Peckham sighed and smiled at the same time.

"You're a fearful good pleader. I don't suppose it would hurt the other girls any to take hold and help, but it's such a nuisance to have to teach them everything when Sally can go right ahead. Still, I'm willing, and if her father is, why, she can go. Seems as if you girls are starting something you can't finish, but mebbe you can."

Piney Hancock had boarded in Willimantic that winter for her third year in high school. So the girls had seen very little of her since the previous September, but Kit rounded up the old members of the Hiking Club, and welded them together into a sort of efficiency committee to help with the summer plan.



CHAPTER XXV

COAXING THE WILDERNESS

The first part of April was unusually mild. A sort of balmy hush seemed to lie over the barren land, as though spring had chosen to steal upon it sleeping. Doris brought in the first violets on the fifteenth, with a few wisps of saxifrage and ragged robin. Shad brought up a load of lumber from the mill the same day, and started to make the flooring for the tents.

Second-hand army tents had been secured, and almost daily something was added to the store of supplies for the summer venture. The next problem to be solved was finding the occupants for the tents, and here it was Jean who helped out.

"You don't want to get a lot of people," she wrote, "who will be expecting all the comforts of a typical summer resort or the excitement of the boardwalk. You want nature-lovers, the kind of people who really and truly want to rest and invite their souls. So I suggest my spreading the glad tidings among the art students here of Greenacre Farms. They are sure to pass it along to their friends. Make your prices, sisters mine, attractive and alluring, and I know the world will make a pathway to your door, as some famous hermit remarked. I am going to sketch a few wonderful placards announcing the golden opportunity."

The next surprise that came was a visit from Piney Hancock, one Saturday afternoon in May. The girls had gone up after wild flowers into the wood-lot. Here Shad and Mr. Robbins had been cutting birches for nearly a week. Helen wandered through the violet-carpeted glades in a perfect day-dream. The warmth and glow had fallen on the land so unexpectedly after days of rain, and now the whole woodland was athrill with the songs of birds and the chirp and chatter of brooding things.

"I wonder just who Helen is making believe she is now," Doris said, reflectively, as she watched the sauntering figure in the misty distance.

"Probably Fair Rosamond, or Blanchefleur," Kit replied, down on her hands and knees after a little patch of flag-root that bordered the bed of a brook. "You know, this fall I'm going to take a whole sack of bulbs and come up here through these woods and plant whole clumps of crocus and narcissus and hyacinths broadcast. Just imagine poet's narcissus underneath those drooping hemlocks."

"I think there's a deer breaking through that path," Helen called to them softly, "with long, spreading antlers!"

The girls listened and caught the unmistakable sound of some large animal pushing its way through the overgrown cow path, but instead of an antlered head, Molly's white nose showed, and Piney called to them gaily from her perch on the old mare's back:

"I had to ride over the minute I got the letter. Who on earth do you suppose, girls, wants to rent one of your tents for the whole summer?"

She slipped off the saddle and held up an envelope, and every one of the three girls guessed the same name:

"Ralph MacRae!"

"Oh, dear, I thought it would be a surprise to you," Piney laughed, dropping down on a patch of green moss. "I had written out to Honey, and told him all about your tent colony. You know they had planned to come east the first of June anyway, and he wants to know whether you have one to spare along the river."

"It's the gem of the whole collection," Kit announced proudly. "Do you remember, Piney, the place where Billie and I had our birch tepee long ago? He used to call it Turtle Cove. There's a dandy shore there, and canoeing on the lake above the Falls. I'd much rather have Honey and Ralph there than strangers."

"Well, you'll probably have me, too," Piney announced, "because I'm just dying to go camping. It seems so queer, Kit, that none of us ever thought of it before. Here are these glorious woods and hills around us, with miles and miles of land as wild as you'd find anywhere, yet we all cling to the little farm spots. I hope somebody else will go ahead and put up tents the way you folks have done. I was telling a lot of the girls at high school about it, and they may take a tent for a couple of weeks."

"And Cousin Roxy told me yesterday that she was positive Billie and Mr. Howard would come down for a while in July or August." Kit heaved a sigh of contentment, as she rose from the ground. "I see that my wilderness is going to blossom like the rose, Proserpine Hancock. Now, if you'll kindly tell me where all these tent dwellers of mine are going to get fresh water from when the brooks dry up, I'll be glad. They can't all trot way up to the house to our well."

"Trot it to them," Piney suggested instantly. "Charge them five cents a pail for it, and let one of the little Peckham boys handle that. I'll tell you one thing I bet you girls don't know. There's a never-failing spring about a mile up the road, and a lot of them could get water there. It's right near Cynthy Allen's old place."

Kit regarded her admiringly, as they all started back down the woodroad towards home, Molly trailing along behind leisurely.

"I believe Cousin Roxy was perfectly right. She told me long ago, Piney, before I ever knew you, that you knew where every single wild flower bloomed in all Gilead Township, and every cow path and brook."

Piney's eyes held a little wistful gleam, but she smiled with the old dauntless tilt to her head.

"I guess I do around Greenacres," she said. "You see, Honey and I always thought it would be our home some day, and about the first thing that I can remember is mother telling us all the places around here that she loved best when she was a girl. I suppose that's why I remember them all."

Doris and Helen were far ahead, trying to get down some branches of dogwood that hung invitingly over the stone wall at the side of the road, and Kit laid one hand in comradely fashion on Piney's shoulder. What she meant to say was how wonderful and brave she had always thought Piney was, and how oftentimes, when her own pluck failed her, she would think of the Hancocks and how they had kept their faces valiantly turned to the sunny side of care through all the years of necessity and privation, but girls are curious people, and all that she really said was:

"Life's awfully queer, isn't it, Piney?"

Piney nodded with a little smile.

"It's fun though," she said, "if you just keep your face to the front and never look behind."



CHAPTER XXVI

PAYING GUESTS

The first campers were due to arrive the second week in June, but everything was in complete readiness long before that time. The girls never wearied of making their tours of inspection to be sure nothing had been overlooked, and each time it seemed as if they added a few more finishing touches.

Cousin Roxy declared it was all so inviting that she felt like closing up the big house and coaxing the Judge to camp out with her.

Instead of grouping the tents together, they had chosen the most picturesque and sequestered spots to hide them away in. There was one on a little jutting point of land near the Peckham mill. Here, the river swept out in a wide U-shaped curve that was crowned with gray rocks and pines. The music of the falls reached it, and the road was only about quarter of a mile across the fields to the north, but apparently it was completely isolated.

"I'd like to put a poet in there," Helen said, "or a musician. Wasn't it Rubenstein, Kit, who used to take his violin and play the music of the rain and falling water?"

"Ask me not, child, ask me not," returned Kit, practically. "All I'm wondering about this minute is how on earth Shad ever expected this fly to stay put, if a good, old-fashioned Gilead thunder-storm ever hit it."

Helen watched her as she climbed up on a camp stool, with most precarious footing, and tried to readjust the fly at the back of the tent.

"Don't you have to take them in when it storms or the wind blows, just like sails?" she asked. "Ingeborg and Astrid told me that. They learned it from their camp-fire rules. I'm sure you don't leave them stringing out like that, Kit."

All at once Doris came speeding around the rock path, her eyes wide with excitement, her whole manner full of mystery.

"There's an automobile just stopped in the road," she exclaimed, "and the man in it asked me who lived in the tent over here."

"I never supposed any one could see that tent from the road." Kit's tone held a distinct note of disappointment. "What did he want to sell us, Dorrie, lightning rods or sewing machines?"

"Oh, Kit, don't," pleaded Doris. "He's really in earnest, and he's coming over here right now. I told him all about everything, and he thinks he might want to rent a tent."

Kit's countenance cleared like magic. She forgot the refractory strip of canvas, and descended immediately from the camp stool.

"Lead me, sister darling, to this first paying guest, who cannot resist the woodland lure. Helen, don't you dare say anything to spoil the inviting picture which I shall give him. I don't see what more he could want." She hesitated a moment, surveying the river, almost directly below the sloping rock. "Why, he could almost sit up in bed in the morning and haul in his fish-lines from yon winding stream with a fine catch for breakfast on it."

"Oh, hurry, Kit, and don't stop to spout," Doris begged. "He is really awfully nice, and he's in earnest, I know he is."

But Kit went with dignity across the fields to the road where the automobile stood with its lone occupant. He must have been over forty years of age, but with his closely curled dark hair and alert smile he appeared much younger. He wore no hat, and was heavily tanned. It seemed to Kit at first glance as though she had never seen eyes so full of keen curiosity and genial friendliness.

"How do you do?" he called as soon as she came within hailing distance. "Are you the young lady who has the renting of these tents which I see every once in a while?"

Kit admitted that she was. He nodded his head approvingly and smiled, a broad pleasant smile which seemed to include the entire landscape.

"I like it here," he announced with emphasis. "It is sequestered and silent. I have not met a single team or car on the road for miles."

"Oh, that happens often," said Kit, eagerly. "There are days when nobody passes at all except the mail carrier."

"It suits me," he exclaimed, buoyantly. "I must have quiet and perfect relaxation. I will rent one of your tents and occupy it at once. I have been touring this part of the country looking for a spot which appealed to me."

"We have one on the hill yonder," Kit suggested. He seemed rather peculiar, and perhaps it would be just as well to sequester him as far off as possible. "It is right on the edge of the pines, and faces the west. The sunsets are beautiful from there."

"No, no," he repeated. "I like the sound of the water. I hear falls below here. I will take that tent I see over there."

So came the first tent dweller to Greenacres. Kit had still been in doubt, and taking no chances on strangers within the gates, she had guided Mr. Ormond up to her father to make the closing arrangements on renting the waterfall tent, as the girls called it, for the entire summer. The most amazing part was that he left a check that first day for $75.00, full rental for ten weeks.

"I must not be interrupted or bothered by little things," he told Mr. Robbins, earnestly. "I must have perfect isolation or I cannot do my work."

"Now, what on earth do you suppose he meant by that?" Kit asked, after the underslung gray roadster had passed out of sight. "My goodness, girls, he may be a counterfeiter. You can bet a cookie Gilead would look upon him as a suspicious character when he could pay seventy-five dollars right down all at once."

"I rather liked his face," Mrs. Robbins remarked, "and he gave your father excellent business references. I think you're very fortunate that he happened to travel this way."

He arrived promptly the following day and arranged with Shad to put up the automobile in the barn.

"Well, I've lugged down all his belongings to the tent," Shad said, rather hopelessly, that night, "and I can't find out for the life of me what kind of business he's in. He had a lot of heavy bundles, and I asked him a few questions about them, but he didn't seem to take kindly to it, so I let him alone. There's one thing though he's got, and that's a big photograph in a silver frame of an all-fired handsome woman he says is his wife. She's dressed just like a queen, crown and all."

Helen's eyes were bright with interest, as she listened, but Kit's straight, dark brows were drawn together in a frown of perplexity.

"I suppose we'll just have to wait until we find out," she said, "but we'll hope for the best. Piney says he's made arrangements to buy eggs and chickens from them, so I see where our paying guests are going to scatter prosperity around the neighborhood."

Ralph MacRae and Honey arrived the seventeenth of June and took the Turtle Cove tent. The girls did not see very much of them until after Jean came up from the city, but then Ralph became what Doris called "the unexpected guest," dropping in at any time. Helen was the one who suspected a budding romance, but she contented herself with watching Jean meditatively, and investing her with the glamour of all her favorite heroines.

The first fruits of Jean's efforts to colonize the tents came with a letter from Bab Crane.

"You're going to have four of the girls from school through July anyway, and August if they like it. I've told them the scenery is perfectly gorgeous and they can pitch their easels anywhere they like, so be sure and give them the tents with the best outlook. I think it probable that you may catch Miss Emery, too, if Frances writes back approvingly. She's awfully odd, and lives all alone in a beautiful old mansion down on Washington Square, but her pictures are splendid, and she's a member of the N.A.D."

The next surprise was a letter from Billie. He could not reach home before the middle of July, as he was going on another trip with Stanley, but there were five of the boys from his class who wanted to come up and camp.

"I've told them the fishing is great around there, and they're going to make the trip from here in Jeff Saunders' car. Jeff's from Georgia, and most of the fellows have never been north. We're going to join them later on, so if you've got a bunch of tents together, you better save us three.

"Now, Kit, listen here, when I struck Delphi, and landed with all that crowd of girls unexpectedly, you know how well I behaved, just for your sake. Don't you get superior and toploftical with the boys when they come, because every last one of them is the right sort, and they're expecting to find Gilead folks waiting for them with open arms from what I've told them."

"Well, upon my word, I like that," exclaimed Kit, as she threw the letter down on the table. "Any one would think that I didn't know how to treat people. Just the same, we'll put them all over in the glen, where they can do just as they please, and not interfere with high art or our mysterious stranger."

Sally opened her "General Emporium" the first of June. It stood exactly at the crossroads, beside Greenacre Hall. There was the waterfall, and the old bridge leading to the Scotland road. With Shad to superintend the work, the Peckham boys had erected a little slab shack, and Sally had planted wild cucumber and morning-glory vines thickly about the outside, the last week in April, so that by June they had clambered half-way up. There were rustic window boxes of birch, filled with nasturtiums and Wandering Jew.

Inside the store there were two counters, one on either side as you entered, and these had been Mr. Peckham's contribution to the good cause. Several old hickory armchairs from Cousin Roxy's helped to give the interior an inviting appearance, and Sally put up little, thin scrim curtains at the windows.

At first the stocking up of the store had been somewhat of a problem, but Cousin Roxy helped out with the business plan, and by this time nearly every one in Gilead was taking a keen, personal interest in the girls' venture.

It was Ma Parmalee who first suggested Sally selling on the commission plan.

"I've got thirty-five jars of the best kind of preserves and canned goods in Gilead, though I say it as shouldn't," she announced, one day, when she had stopped on her way by the crossroads to look over the new establishment. "Most of them are pints, and besides I've got—land, I don't know how many glasses of jell. I'd be willing to give you a right good share of whatever you could make on 'em, if you could sell 'em off for me down here."

Sally agreed gladly, and the fruit made a splendid showing along the upper shelves behind the counters. Not only that, but it began to sell at once. Mr. Ormond bought up all of the quince jelly after sampling one glass, and Ralph acknowledged that he and Honey were perfectly willing to become responsible for the strawberry preserves and spiced pears. By the time Frances Cunningham and the other girls from the Academy had arrived, Sally was already looking around for more supplies.

Then Cynthy Allen had come over with Cousin Roxy one day. Ever since her home had burned the year before she had been under the friendly roof up at Elmhurst, helping out according to her strength, and never fully realizing how the shelter of the old house kept her from the poor-farm down on the Plains. She came into the store with an old black lace veil fluttering as usual from her hat, and a brown bombazine dress that dated from the eighties.

"Well, you've got the place fixed up real sightly," she said. "I wonder—I don't suppose you'd have any sale for braided rag rugs, would you? I've got some awful pretty ones packed away in my chest, brand new, too. I've been sewing and winding all winter for Roxana, too, but I guess she plans to use them for carpets."

Sally accepted the suggestion instantly, and down came half a dozen oval rugs, braided in Cynthy's best style, that were snapped up at once by the tent dwellers. Frances bought three to put around in the tent which she had reserved for Miss Emery.

"Haven't you got some of that painted tinware, too, Sally?" she asked. "I don't know just what you call it, but I mean the black candlesticks and little trays with trailing vines on them. I'd like to put some of those around."

The very next day Helen started off with Piney on the trail of old candlesticks. They stopped at nearly every house they came to, and returned with a perfect treasure trove of old relics.

"Why, we found candlesticks stuck out in wood-sheds and corn-cribs, rusty as could be, but the real thing in colonial art, and mother," Helen added, almost lowering her voice with a touch of awe, "what on earth do you think Mrs. Parmalee had on her hen-house door? This!"

She held up an ancient brass knocker, a smiling faun's head encircled in wreathing vines.

"That doesn't look as if it ever belonged on a Puritan's front door," said Mrs. Robbins, laughingly. "I rather think it must have come from Merry Mount, where they held the first Maypole dance and shocked good Cotton Mather. I think I'll have to buy that from Sally myself."

There were several old lacquered trays and a couple of old gray stone dasher churns.

"We'll take those and fill them with yellow daisies," Piney said, admiringly, "and I'll bet a cookie they'll sell the first day to some of the artist crowd. I found them in the Bennetts' smoke-house covered with the dust of ages."

It was little things like these that made Sally's shop unusual and inviting, but Piney started a new venture herself accidentally. She and Sally had always been chums, and now she spent most of her time helping her. It became the order of the day for them to have a cup of tea about four o'clock. Piney would take a candle-stand by the west window and make it look so inviting with a little strip of homespun linen and a spray of flowering almond that no one could resist tea from the old blue ware which Mrs. Peckham had donated.

They were just having tea one afternoon when Miss Emery came in with the girls from the Academy in New York. There was Frances, and the two Farley sisters, Gwen and Elise. The other girl was Cecil Fanshawe. Kit had a way of summing up family history with a few brief, terse remarks, and she had all four indexed and filed, so to speak.

"Cecil's from Fanshawe Grange, somewhere in Middlesex, England. Father's a Major in France, mother's dead, got two aunts in New York. Gwen and Elise come from Ohio, got French blood from colonial days. Frances is old Knickerbocker stock, born on Washington Square, warranted sterling. I like Cecil best."

When they discovered the tea-table that afternoon, Miss Emery insisted that she would not leave until she had partaken also from the willow pattern cups, and Sally, all blushes and smiles, prepared her first guest tea.

After they had gone she looked at the seventy-five cents in her hand, as though it had fallen from the sky, but Piney took the cue from Fate.

"We will serve afternoon tea here from now on," she said, "and it's going to be twenty cents instead of fifteen. I know what we'll call this place, Sally. There are willow trees all around here, and along the river. This is the 'Sign of the Willow Tree.' We'll make it a stopping-off place for all good pilgrims."



CHAPTER XXVII

HELENITA'S SONG-BIRD

The tenth of July was always a momentous date in Gilead local history. Every year on that day, down in the little church on the Plains, the grand old guard of '83 held their Carberry Reunion.

The girls had heard of it first through Cousin Roxy, who had been one of the pupils of Professor Carberry in the old days at the Gayhead schoolhouse.

"Land, girls, if we didn't have our reunion every year, we'd begin to feel some of us were growing old," she had said laughingly. "The Professor's class has held that reunion every year since he had to give up the school in '89. There are a few empty places with the coming around of each July, but I guess we'll keep on holding them as long as the Professor holds out."

It was quite an exclusive affair in its way, so that this year, when they were both invited to attend with their mother, Jean and Kit felt the honor. Long afterwards, when she had attained her assured place in the world of art, Jean exhibited a painting which won her her first medal. It was only a shadowy interior of an old meetinghouse. The sunshine filtered through half-closed green blinds at the long windows. Up on the platform there sat Professor Carberry, a little, shrunken figure in black broadcloth, the lean, scholarly old face, blanched with the snows of eighty-odd years, filled with eagerness as he looked down on the little assembled remnant of the old guard.

Cousin Bethiah Newell always said that this picture was Jean's masterpiece, and she got the inspiration for it on this day. Kit sat very erect at her end of the pew, but even she, who prided herself on being unemotional, had tears on her lashes listening to these dear old-time scholars reciting the poetry out of their old fourth and fifth readers.

Judge Ellis rose with a radiant light in his eyes and spouted, "At midnight in his guarded tent, the Turk lay dreaming of the hour," and for an encore he rolled out "Old Ironsides."

"Ay, tear her tattered ensign down, Long has it waved on high."

Cousin Roxy obliged with "Woodman, spare that tree," but for an encore she gave a tender poem of old-time days, called "Twenty Years Ago." Its verses rang in Kit's head all the way home, and when she learned that Miss Daphne, too, had been one of the old Professor's scholars, she wrote them down and sent them west to her.

"I've wandered to the village, Tom, I've sat beneath the tree, Upon that schoolhouse playground, That sheltered you and me. But few were there to greet me, Tom, And few were left we know, Who played with us upon the green, Just twenty years ago."

"I'll never forget it as long as I live, Cousin Roxy," Kit declared, fervently; "talk about the twanging of heart strings; why, it seemed to me as though I could just feel the way you all felt as you sat there. It was the queerest thing, because Mrs. Peckham is stout and getting gray, and yet when she got up to recite she actually looked like a plump little girl with her brown eyes and rosy cheeks. And Deacon Simmons was as boyish as could be, when he stood there blushing and reading his class paper on 'Old Friendships.'"

"Well, child," said Mrs. Ellis, "I'm glad that you could see a little of the glory that gave light to us. You'll find out as you grow older and stand upon life's hills of rest that the days of childhood and going to school are the sweetest and best that life gives to you. I don't mind saying that I love every clapboard in the little old red schoolhouse, and when I read in a magazine the other day that such things were a thing of the past I wanted to call out that it wasn't any such thing. We had one right here at our crossroads over a hundred and thirty years old, and still turning out its hundred per cent. graduates."

The next morning, just after Shad had gone whistling up to the barn, Doris spied a familiar figure coming along the side drive towards the well sweep, and leaned out of the window, calling with all her heart:

"Hello, Billie!"

Billie waved back with a cheery greeting that brought the other girls hurrying to the window, too.

"The camp's immense," he said. "We got in late last night and I knew the way down, so we didn't disturb anybody. Even found the old boat in the same place, Kit."

"Well, you wouldn't have if I hadn't hauled it there, where I knew you could lay your hand right on it. I rather thought it would be just like you to arrive by the light of the moon and try to swim over."

Billie chuckled. He knew from old, past experience that Kit's scoldings didn't amount to any more than the perturbed clucking of a hen. They had brought up a load of supplies with them, but huckleberry pancakes with honey lured them both up for breakfast that first morning. And even Kit was silent as Stanley related all of his adventures during the year. It seemed to her that she had never really looked at him before, that is, to get the best impression, without prejudice. Somehow, he looked younger and more boyish this year, anyway, in his camper's low-necked sport shirt and khaki riding breeches. Kit noted for the first time his crispy, curly yellow hair, and long, half-closed blue eyes, that always seemed to be laughing at you. He had dimples, too, and these Kit resented.

"I can't abide dimples in a boy or a man's face," she declared, privately, to Helen, when the latter was dwelling on Stanley's good looks.

"But, Kit, all of the Roman emperors had dimples in their chins."

"What if they did? They're a fine lot to judge by." Kit meditated for a moment and then added, "I don't think I like blonde, curly hair either."

"Well, I do," Helen answered, placidly. "I think he'd look wonderful in doublet and hose with a long cloak thrown around him. I think he's much better looking than Ralph."

"You'd better not let Jean hear you say so," Kit told her sagely. "I wouldn't be very much surprised if something mighty interesting happened here this summer. I heard mother and Cousin Roxy talking about Ralph and Jean the other day."

"Oh, Kit, don't be mean. Tell me what they said, please. I won't tell."

"Impossible, child," returned Kit, loftily. "In fact, it was only what I might call a family rumor. But, I can tell you this much, I know perfectly well that Ralph MacRae has asked Dad for his eldest daughter's hand, and I don't know a blessed thing more."

Helen sighed happily.

"I hope she has a September wedding, all gold and purple. It would just suit Jean. If one could only dress her in violet velvet with a girdle of amethysts set with pearls, and braid her hair with strands of jewels, too. Jean always has that far-away look, in her eyes that princesses should have."

"Well, I don't see where you get your princess pattern from," remarked Kit. "From all the recent pictures that I've seen, they're a very ordinary, old-fashioned lot of young persons, and decidedly at the dumpling stage. Besides, Jean herself might have something to say about it. It will be her wedding, you know, Helen."

They had walked down to the Peckham mill after supper to get some supplies that Danny Peckham had promised to bring up from Nantic. Just as they came to the turn of the road there came a strange sound from the direction of the waterfall tent, deep, rich strains of music, almost as low pitched and thrilling as the sound of the water itself. Both girls stood stock still listening, until Helen whispered:

"It must be Mr. Ormond. He's playing on something, isn't he?"

"A 'cello, child," Kit said, drawing in a deep breath as though she could fairly inhale the sweetness of the music on the night air. "I haven't heard one since we left the Cove, and it's mother's favorite music. I wish I knew what he's playing. It sounds like Solveig's song from Peer Gynt, and I love that."

"Then, that's what he does." Helen's tone held a touch of admiring awe as she listened. "And we thought he might be anything from a counterfeiter to an escaped convict hiding away up here. Oh, Kit, why do you suppose he keeps away from every one?"

"Probably got a hidden sorrow," Kit answered. "Still he's got a terrible appetite. Mrs. Gorham says she doesn't see how he ever puts away the amount of food he does. He buys whole roast chickens and eats them all himself."

Just then the music ceased suddenly. The flap of the tent lifted towards the roadway, and Mr. Ormond sent a hail across the twilight gloom.

"Is that you, Shad?"

"No, sir, it's just us girls," answered Kit. "We're going down to the mill."

"Would you mind so very much, Miss Kit, asking if any one has telephoned a telegram up for me from the station? I am expecting one."

"There, you see," Helen said, dubiously, as they went on down the road. "We just get rid of one mystery, and he hands us another one to solve. Who on earth would he be getting a telegram from?"

Kit laughed and slipped her arm around the slender shoulders that were growing so quickly up to her own.

"You're getting just as bad as every one else here in Gilead, Helenita. I thought only Mr. Ricketts took an interest in telegrams and post-cards."

Nevertheless, when Sally told them that there had been a message 'phoned up from Nantic, even Kit showed quick interest.

It was signed "Concetta," and the message read:

"Arrive Nantic, ten-two. All love and tenderness. Contract signed."

The girls returned after delivering the message, brimful of the news, but Mr. Robbins laughed at them.

"Why, bless your hearts," he said, "I could have told you long ago all about Bryan Ormond. He is one of the greatest 'cellists we have, and is married to Madame Concetta Doria, the grand-opera singer. He told me when he first took the tent for the summer, but as he was composing a new opera, he wanted absolute solitude up here, and asked me not to let any one know who they were."

"Talk about entertaining an angel unawares," Jean exclaimed. "Now, Helen, you'll have your chance, if you can only get acquainted with her. I can see you perched on their threshold drinking in trills and quavers the rest of the summer."

Helen only smiled happily. It was she who had pleaded most for the preservation of the empire grand piano. The one in the gold case with all the Watteau figures and garlands painted on it, that had been saved as one of the "white hyacinths" from the old home. After the day's work was over, it was always Helen who stole into the dim front room to listen while her mother played over favorite airs from the old grand-operas. Perhaps only Helen really understood how at this time Gilead and all its rural delights vanished, and in their place came memories of the days back at the Cove, when the season tickets at the opera had been as natural a part of the year's pleasures as setting hens were here.

"Have you ever heard her sing, mother?" she asked, that first evening, after Mrs. Robbins had played the "Shadow Dance" from "Dinorah" and the trio from "Traviata."

"I heard her in both of these, dear, and ever so many more. I think my favorite was Rigoletto. She was a beautiful, girlish Gilda, but that is years ago. You girls will love her."

"And just to think of her coming to live in a tent at Greenacre Farms," Helen said, almost in a hushed whisper. "It seems as if we ought to offer them the royal suite."

"If you did, they would run away. That is just what they have come here to escape from, all the royal suites and pomp."

Even Jean was on the tiptoe of expectancy to get her first look at Madame Ormond. While not one of the girls could have explained just exactly how they suspected she would look, still they held a blurred picture of a picturesque mortal set apart from ordinary home folks, who would probably dress more or less eccentrically.

Kit was in the kitchen making scones for lunch, when a shadow fell across the entry threshold. Doris sat on the edge of the table by the window picking over blackberries, and the two stared fixedly at the intruder. She was frankly over forty, a large buoyant type of woman with a mass of curly ashen blonde hair and sparkling black eyes, the north of Italy type, with a wonderful complexion, as Helen said later, like the skin of a yellow peach. Perhaps it was her smile that charmed the girls mostly, though, at that first glance. It was such a radiant smile of good fellowship when she peered into the shadowy interior of the old kitchen.

"Good-morning, everybody. I have come for butter and eggs, and milk." She spied the two-quart pail of berries on the table, and gave a little cry of interest. "Where do you find those, my dear?"

Doris told her shyly that they came from the rock pasture on the hill behind the house.

"Will you come down to the tent this afternoon and take me there? Mr. Ormond is very, very busy working on his new opera, and I must be away and let him write in peace, so you and I will have to follow the trails together, yes?" She smiled down into Doris' piquant, freckled little face, and just at this moment there came from the living-room, where Helen was dusting, Dinorah's Shadow Song, sung in a clear, girlish soprano.

Madame Ormond laid her finger on her lips and listened, her eyes bright with attention and interest.

"It is still another one of you?" she asked, softly, when the melody died away. "You shall bring her down to the tent to me and let my husband try her voice with the 'cello. It is his big baby, that 'cello, but it is very wise; it never gives the wrong decision on a voice, and she has a very beautiful one."

"Well," Kit declared, with a deep sigh, after the diva had gone on down towards the road with her butter, eggs and milk, "we've always believed we were an exceptional family. In fact Mrs. Gorham told me once she thought every last one of us had very intelligent faces, but now we know we are budding geniuses. Of course, Dorrie, you and I haven't budded very much so far, but with an artist and a prima donna in a family, we'll have to begin our song of triumph pretty soon. I'll bet a cookie she'll go up there in the pasture every day and do her vocal practicing out of hearing of the 'cello, and Helenita will perch on the nearest rock and play echo."



CHAPTER XXVIII

STANLEY PAYS AN OLD SCORE

The first week in August, Jean, who had acted as treasurer of the tent fund, announced that it had proved a solid financial success. Every tent was full and booked up to the middle of September. The girls from the Art School had persuaded two more batches to find the trail to Gilead, and Billie's boy friends had turned their tents into headquarters for the club they belonged to at school.

Jeff Saunders had used his car back and forth until Kit declared it made her think of the fox, goose and bag of corn story.

"Jeff skips down to Richmond and takes back a couple of boys, lays off himself for a couple of weeks, and lo, and behold, the car comes back with three new ones, but I must say that they're the best behaved lot of boys I ever saw. You'd hardly know they were around at all, except for the twanging of ukuleles and guitars at night. And they certainly have kept us supplied with fish ever since they came. I think it's done Dad a world of good going away with them and kind of turning into a boy again. Stanley said the other day they were going out fishing all night just as soon as the bass were running."

Mrs. Gorham was setting the table for lunch and stopped at the last words, one hand on her ample hip, and a look of anxiety in her eyes.

"They ain't calculatin' to fish over there beyond the dam, are they? That's where the Gaskell boy come near drowning a year ago, when his boat upset. It's just full of sunken snags for half a mile up the river above the island."

"I guess that's where they're going just the same. Billie Ellis thinks that he knows every foot of space on that upper lake and river just because he's poled around on it for years with that old leaky, flat-bottomed boat of his."

"Well, it's all right in the daytime," Mrs. Gorham rejoined, "but I wouldn't give two cents for their safety fishing for bass on a dark night among those snags."

It happened that the very next day Kit decided that it was high time to garner in the crabapple crop and start making jelly. The best trees around Greenacres were up on the old Cynthy Allen place. While the house had burned down the year before, still Cynthy's fruit trees were famous all over Gilead and Mr. Robbins had bought up the crop in advance from her. As Cynthy said rather pathetically when the money was placed in her hand:

"Land, Jerry, I never thought those old fruit trees would bring me a windfall just when I needed it most for taxes and such like."

It was only about a mile and a half to Cynthy's place from the crossroads, but Shad had taken Princess down to Nantic after grain, and Kit had no inclination to carry several pecks of crabapples in a sack along a dusty road. Doris and Helen were out with Madame Ormond on a wood hike, and Jean and her mother had been invited by Miss Emery to afternoon tea at her tent, so that Kit was left to her own devices.

She stood on the veranda irresolutely, a couple of grain sacks thrown over her shoulder, and suddenly the sparkle of the river through the trees in the distance caught her eye. Certainly, that was the answer. She had not had a chance the whole summer to go out in the boat and bask in idleness. Always before this, Billie and she had chummed together through the summer months, and she knew Little River all the way from the Fort Ned Falls at the crossroads to where it slipped away in a shallow stream to the upper hills.

There were several old rowboats lying bottom side up on the shore above the falls. Kit selected the newest of the lot, a slender green boat that Billie had lately acquired, although she had never tried rowing anything but a flat-bottomed boat. It was the very first time also that she had been out in a boat alone, but this fact never daunted Kit. She rowed up the river with a firm level stroke, thoroughly enjoying herself and the novelty of solitude. When she passed the island, Stanley was down on the little stretch of beach cleaning a mess of fish for supper. She sent him a hail across the water, and he held up a string of pickerel invitingly. There had been a thunder-storm and a quick midsummer rain the early part of the afternoon, and the campers had been quick to take advantage of the fishing.

"I'll stop for them on my way back," Kit called. "Just going up after crabapples at the Allen place." She had swerved the boat towards the bank on the opposite side of the island, without looking behind her, when suddenly Stanley sprang to his feet, and shouted across the water:

"To the left, Kit—hard to the left, do you hear!"

Instead of obeying without question, Kit turned her head to see what on earth he was warning her against, and before she could stop herself the rowboat was caught in an eddy that formed a miniature maelstrom at this point, from a large sunken tree that fell nearly to midstream from the shore. The frail rowboat overturned like a crumpled leaf. Kit was bareheaded and it seemed to Stanley as long as he lived he would never forget the sight of her upturned face, as it slipped down into the dark, swirling water. She did not cry out, or even seem to make an attempt to swim, it all happened so suddenly. There was only the horrible, warm silence of the drowsy, midsummer landscape, and the dancing, pitching rowboat, twirling around and around in circles.

It seemed an hour to him before he had plunged into the river, and swam across to the spot where she had disappeared. The gripping horror was that she hadn't come up at all. Even before he reached the spot where he had seen her go under, Stanley dove and swam under water with his eyes open. The river bottom was a mass of swaying vegetation and gnarled, sunken roots of old trees. It seemed for the moment like outreaching fingers clutching upward. He could see the black trunk of the tree, but there was no sign of Kit until he was fairly upon her, and then he found her, her dress and hair held fast on the bare branches.

Billie had been in the tent, getting the potatoes on for dinner, and otherwise performing his duties as assistant camp cook. He had heard Stanley's voice calling to some one, but had not taken the trouble to look out until he failed to find a favorite pot on its accustomed hook. Sticking his head out through the tent flap, he called down to the beach:

"Say, Stan, where's the granite pot with the long handle?" He listened for an answer but none came, and after a second call he started to investigate. The sudden complete disappearance of Stanley mystified him. Their boat lay in its accustomed place on the shore with the oars beside it, and there were the fish beside the cleaning board just as he had left them a moment ago.

"Well, I'll be jiggered," muttered Billie when there came a cry across the river—Stanley calling for help.

Billie could just see him swimming with one long overhand stroke, and holding up something on his other shoulder, but following scout law, he stopped not to meditate, but pushed the boat off to the rescue.

There was no sign of life, at least to Billie's fear-struck eyes, in the limp, dripping figure which Stanley laid so tenderly in the bottom of the boat.

"Quit shaking like that, Bill," he ordered in husky sternness. "You row to the island as fast as you can."

On the way across he knelt beside her, applying first-aid methods, while Billie rowed blindly, trying to choke back the dry sobs that would rise in his throat, and the hot, boyish tears that blinded him every time he looked at Kit's face, and thought of the Mother Bird. It did not seem as if it could possibly be Kit, his dauntless, self-reliant pal, lying there so white and still. When they reached the shore of the island, Stanley carried her in his arms to his own cot.

"Hadn't I better go for help?" Billie asked.

"There isn't time," Stanley answered, shortly. "Warm those blankets, get me the bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia, and unlace her boots."

All the time he was talking, he worked over Kit as swiftly and tenderly as any nurse, but it seemed hours to Billie before there came at last a half-sobbing sigh from her lips, as the agonized lungs caught their first breath of air, and she opened her eyes.

Neither Stanley nor Billie spoke as she stared from one to the other in slow surprise, taking in the interior of the tent, and Stanley's dripping clothing, and then she said, the most comical thing at such a time:

"Billie, did I lose the crabapples, or haven't I gotten them yet?"

"So that's what you were after," Billie cried wrathfully, "poking up the river by yourself in that beastly little boat that turns over if you look at it, and you can swim about as well as a tree-toad. If it hadn't been for Stan here, you'd be absolutely drowned dead by now."

The color stole back into Kit's face. Perhaps if he had sympathized with her, she might have broken down, but as it was, she looked up into Stanley's eyes almost appealingly.

"I'm awfully sorry," she began, but Stanley stopped her with a laugh, as he rolled her up tighter in another blanket.

"I'm the doctor here, now," he said, "and you'll have to mind. I guess if I carry you, we can get you home somehow. The sooner you're in bed, the better."

Mrs. Robbins and the girls were just coming along the road when they beheld the startling procession coming up from the river bank, Stanley carrying the blanketed figure and Billie bringing up the rear. Not the buoyant, carefree Billie they were accustomed to see, a dejected, rather limp-looking figure, with his eyes still full of horror.

"Why, mother," Jean exclaimed, "some one's been hurt." But it seemed as though by some mysterious telepathy of love the news had already flashed on Mrs. Robbins' mind, and she hurried down the road to meet them.

"She's all right," called Stanley, cheerily. "Just took a dip in the river, Mrs. Robbins. If you'll go ahead, please, and get a bed ready, I'll bring her up."

Kit's eyes were closed. He had told her to put her arms around his neck so that he could carry her easier up the hill. Just as they got to the veranda steps he said, under his breath:

"Are you all right, Kit?"

She nodded her head slowly, and opened her eyes.

"Thank you for getting me out," she whispered, with a shyness absolutely new to the Kathleen of yore. "You don't know how I felt when I found myself caught down there, and couldn't get away. I thought that was just all."

"Bring her up-stairs, Stanley," called Jean. "Mother's telephoning to Dr. Gallup, but I suppose the danger's all past now. Kit, you big goose, what did you ever go in that boat alone for? The minute you're left alone, you're always up to something. Just like the day when she had you locked up in the corn-crib, Stanley."

Stanley smiled, a curious reminiscent smile, as he laid his burden down on the white bed by the window.

Probably only Kit heard his answer, for Jean had sped after hot ginger tea, and Helen and Doris were filling hot-water bottles, but Kit heard and smiled as he said:

"God bless the corn-crib."



CHAPTER XXIX

KIT GIVES HER BLESSING

Probably the next three days were the longest Kit had ever spent in her life. Under Dr. Gallup's orders, she remained in bed to get over the shock of her immersion.

"When I don't feel shocked a bit," she expostulated. "I don't see why I can't sit in a chair down on the veranda."

"Yes, you just want to pose as an interesting invalid," Jean laughed. She laid a rose-pink negligee jacket on the foot of the bed, with a little white lace boudoir cap, caught here and there with pink satin rosebuds. "Mother just took these out of the treasures of the past for you to dress up in, and Cousin Roxy sent down a stack of books for you to read. Stanley and Billie call about six times a day to inquire after you, and Madame Ormond has offered to come and sing for you. Ralph told us he heard she gets a thousand dollars a night in New York, so you can see how honored you are, Kit."

"Jean, look at me," said Kit suddenly. "Will you tell me something, honest and true?"

"I think mother's calling." Jean's voice was rather hurried, as she started for the door.

"No, she isn't any such thing. I want to know if you and Ralph are engaged. I don't see why you should try to keep it a secret when everybody thinks you are anyway. And a wedding in the family would be so exciting."

But Jean shook her head, coloring quickly, and hurried down-stairs, with only a laugh for an answer. Kit stared out of the window, rather resentfully. She would be sixteen in November, and Jean was past eighteen. Eighteen loomed ahead of her as a year of discretion, a time when you naturally came into your heritage of mature reason and common sense. She remembered once the Dean remarking that the human brain did not reach its full development until eighteen, and how at the time she resented it, feeling absolutely sure at fifteen there was nothing under the sun she could not understand fully.

But the tumble in the river and peril to her life had left her completely stranded, as it were, upon an unknown shore of indecision. Evidently it was just what Billie had called it, a fool stunt for her to try and row up that river alone. Kit had always gone rather jauntily on her way doing as she thought best with an unshakable confidence that nothing could happen to her. Now she suddenly faced life with a new respect for the unexpected. Snags and sunken trees in the way of intrepid voyagers were evidently facts which one had to guard against.

Another thing, there was a very uncomfortable sensation around Kit's crown of glory, for her enemy had heaped coals of fire on her head, and returned good for evil in such an overwhelming measure, she never could repay him. Surely twenty-four hours had made an enormous difference in Kit's outlook on life, for she considered these things instead of the pink negligee on the foot of the bed.

The afternoon of the third day she was allowed to sit down on the veranda in a large willow armchair. Helen and Doris hovered over her quite as if she had been the heroine of some romantic adventure, and nearly all the tent colonists visited her in relays. Billie came up last of all, and brought her a live walking-stick on a spray of sassafras, as a special token, but Stanley did not appear.

"He's gone off up in the hills," Billie told her, "chasing some kind of a new moth. You'd be awfully dead by now, Kit, if he hadn't happened to see you go down, because I was in the tent and didn't know anything about it. But it was just like him to dash after you, and pull you out. He did that one day in Washington last winter, and saved a little darky from being run down by a fire engine. I told him he was a regular emergency doctor. I wish I could be like he is; I mean right on the job when there's any real danger."

Kit leaned her chin reflectively on her hand.

"Heroes are such uncomfortable people in everyday life, Billie," she said. "Everybody, even Dad and mother, keep telling me how everlastingly grateful I must be to him for saving my life. I don't see what I can do except thank him, and I have done that."

"Treat him decently," Billie suggested, encouragingly. "Even if you don't like him, hide it."

"Oh, I like him well enough," Kit answered, "only he's never seemed like Ralph, and Honey, and you. I guess I've always resented every one thinking he was so wonderful. It was as though he had had a sort of sweet revenge on me for taking him for a berry hooker."

She stopped as Ralph and Jean came slowly up the drive together. Jean's arms were filled with early goldenrod, and she had some woodbine leaves fastened in a close fillet crown about her smooth dark hair. Ralph came up the veranda steps and seated himself on a pile of straw mats beside the willow chair.

"We've just decided," he announced, "and Jean says I may tell you all. It's going to happen in September, so she can go west with me. How do you like your new brother, Kit?"

"I approve," answered Kit, solemnly. "You know I've always liked you, Ralph, and I hereby bestow the hand of Jean upon you with all my blessings. Are you going to let her keep on painting?"

"She can do anything she likes," Ralph promised. "And if she can find any more beautiful scenery than we have in Saskatchewan and throughout Northwest Canada, then I'll live and die right here in Gilead."

If it had been any one but Ralph MacRae, Mrs. Robbins said, the family would never have given its united consent to Jean's marriage, but ever since that first summer when he had arrived at Greenacres as their unknown landlord, Ralph had been accepted as one of the family circle.

Piney and Honey were delighted over this new bond between the two families.

"We will be all cousins by marriage now," Piney said, "and if you girls don't let me be a bridesmaid, too, I'll never pass your portals again."



CHAPTER XXX

FACING REALITY

The wedding was set for the twentieth of September, and the last of the tent colony departed two weeks previously. The boys had gone first of all, and then the art students. The night before they left there had been a moonlight lawn party up at Greenacres, with dancing in a pavilion of young willows built by the boys. Kit declared she had never imagined anything so easy and so striking. With a good floor laid for dancing, they had erected a framework and then tied the willow trees to this on the four sides of the pavilion. Crisscrossing overhead were rows of Japanese lanterns. Old Cady Graves paced up and down playing his violin, as usual, and calling off for the quadrille, in his high pitched rhythmic cadence.

But the biggest surprise of all came when Bryan Ormond, who had stirred the musical circles of two worlds, took his place on the little country platform and played for them on his 'cello. The Judge and Mrs. Ellis enjoyed it just as the Robbinses did. It was a novel treat to hear the strains of Lizst and Chopin sounding in the purple silences of those old country hills, but when he had finished, Cynthy leaned over to Kit, who sat next to her and who was in an uplifted rhapsody of meditation.

"Do you suppose he'd be willing to play 'Home, Sweet Home' on that thing if we asked him to? 'Tain't nothin' but a big fiddle, is it?"

Before Kit could answer, Madame Ormond herself stood facing them on the veranda steps under the big yellow porch light, and instead of any grand-opera aria, her golden voice floated out for them, singing Cynthy's favorite as surely it had never been sung before in Gilead.

After it was all over and the girls were in their own rooms, Kit stepped to Helen's door for an extra match, and found her standing before the mirror, a long green velvet portiere draped around her shoulders, and a strip of gold braid banding her hair. She turned around with quick embarrassment, and exclaimed breathlessly:

"Oh, Kit, please don't tell. I was just trying to look like Isolde. Madame Ormond has a photograph of herself dressed like this, and I was wondering if I ever would sing it."

Kit wrapped her arms around her as she stood behind her, almost as if she would have protected her from any dizzy flights of fancy.

"You look more like Brunehilda the Golden-haired," she said. "There's one thing about us Robbinses, nobody can say that we lack courage in our ambitions."

"Oh, but Kit, Madame Ormond says that she is sure my voice will develop into something worth while."

"Well, let's hope so, anyhow," Kit answered, practically, but with an affectionate squeeze that took away any offense from her words. "You know that old favorite saying of Cousin Roxy's, 'It's better to aim at the stars and hit the bar post, than to aim at the bar post and hit the ground.'"

Helen turned around, an anxious look in her blue eyes.

"You're always so matter-of-fact, Kit. You see, I am fourteen now, and it's about time I was having some kind of an ambition. Isn't there anything at all that you long to do more than anything in the world? Something that you've thought and thought about for months and months until it became like a light ahead of you?"

Kit sat down on the edge of the bed and thought a minute. Life had never presented itself to her in vistas. She lived each day as it came with an unconquerable optimism, such as no one else except Cousin Roxy seemed to possess in the family.