Kit of Greenacre Farm Part 3

"But you can't get any perspective at all if you shut yourself up in the dark," Kit argued. She leaned her chin on both palms, elbows planted firmly on the table, as she prepared to influence the opinion of the family. "Now just listen to this, and don't all speak at once until I get through. You went away, Jean, down to New York, and then up to Boston, and though I say it as shouldn't, right to your face, you came back to the bosom of your family, very much better satisfied and pleasanter to live with. I think after you've stayed in one place too long you get, well--as Billie says, 'fed up' and wish to goodness you could get away somewhere. I haven't any art at all, or anything special that I could wave at you and demand 'expression' as Bab Crane calls it. What I need is something new to develop my special gifts and talents, and mother darling, if you would only consent to let me go for even two or three months, I will come back to you a perfect angel, besides doing Uncle Ca.s.sius and Aunt Daphne a pile of good, I know."

"It sounds right enough, dear," Mrs. Robbins said, her brown eyes full of amus.e.m.e.nt, "but we can't very well disguise you as a boy, and Uncle Ca.s.sius is not the kind of person to trifle with."

Kit thought this over seriously.

"Don't tell them until I've started," she suggested, "and be sure and mail the letter so it will get there after I do, and send me quick, so they won't have any chance to change their minds. Jean will be home until the middle of October, and you really and truly don't need me here at all. I'm sure there must have been a missionary concealed away in our family like a hidden spring, for I feel the zeal of conversion upon me. I long to descend on Delphi."

"Well, I don't know what to say, Kit. I'll have to talk it over with your father first. I wonder why Uncle Ca.s.sius thought we had a boy in the family, and why he wanted him specially."

"Maybe he thought a boy would be more interested in antiques. Are they Chinese porcelains and jewels, or just mummy things?"

"Mostly ruins, as I remember," laughed her mother. "When he was young, Uncle Ca.s.sius used to be sent away by the Geographical Society to explore buried cities in Chaldea and Egypt."

"Bless his heart, I wish I could coax him to start in again, right now, and take me with him," Kit exclaimed, blithely. "Anyhow, I'm going to hope that it will come right and I can go. I shall collect my Lares and Penates and start packing. Can I borrow your steamer trunk, Jean? Just write a charming letter, mother dear, sort of in the abstract, you know, thanking him, and calling us 'the children' in the aggregate, so he can't detect just what we are, then when I depart, you can wire them, 'Kit arrives such and such a time.' They'll probably expect a Christopher, and once I land there, and they realize the treasure you have sent them, they will forgive me anything."

Uncle Ca.s.sius' letter was read over again carefully by Mr. Robbins. Kit carried it out to the grape arbor, where he and Hiram were untangling and training some vagrant vines to travel in the way they should go, up over the trellis work. There was a round table here made of birchwood that just fitted nicely into the octagonal arbor, encircled by birch seats. Leading away from the arbor proper were two long pergolas, likewise built by Hiram, of birchwood. The arbor had always been a favorite spot with the girls, when Aunt Roxy had lived in the rambling old white homestead. Now that it was their abiding place _pro tem._, they spent nearly all their leisure time out there. There was always a breeze from the south that made the arbor a port of call, and each one of its vine-framed openings was a lookout over wide s.p.a.ces of beauty. Cousin Roxy had once said that she had made a point of using the arbor as a spot to "rest and invite her soul,"

for years. It had been to her like David's tower, with all its windows open towards Jerusalem.

"I don't mind Hiram hearing," Kit said; "maybe he can suggest some way out. Just read that letter over, Dad, very, very carefully, and see if there isn't some way you can smuggle me out to Delphi, without hurting Uncle Ca.s.sius' feelings."

Mr. Bobbins adjusted his eye-gla.s.ses, smiling the little whimsical smile that Kit loved, and together they read the missive again----

"MY DEAR JERROLD:--

"I trust both you and Elizabeth are enjoying good health, and that this finds you both facing a more prosperous time than when I heard last from you.

"It has occurred to both Daphne and myself that we may be able to relieve you of part of your responsibility and care, at least for a short time. If the experiment should prove advantageous to all concerned we might be able to arrange a longer stay. One suggestion, however, I feel privileged to make. We would prefer that you would send the boy, as you know this is a college town, and I am sure it would broaden his views to come west, even for a short time. I need hardly add that we will do all in our power to make his stay a pleasant and profitable one.

"Another point to consider is this. I would like to interest him in a few of my little hobbies, archaeology, geology, etc. I have delved deeply into the mysteries of the past, and feel I should pa.s.s what I have learned on as a heritage to youth.

"Trusting that you and Elizabeth will be able to coincide with our views in the matter, I remain,

"Yours faithfully, Ca.s.sIUS C. PEABODY."

"You know, Dad," here Kit slipped her area persuasively around her father's neck and patted his shoulder, "you've always said yourself that I was the 'David Copperfield' in the family. Don't you know how the child was to be named after his aunt, Betsy Trotwood, and she never really forgave him for turning out to be a boy instead of a girl. Mother has told me how she named me Jerrold, Jr., and anyway I've done the best I could to live up to it. Billie says I'm an awfully good pal, and he'd much rather talk to me than any of the boys he knows at school, because I understand what he's driving at."

"But don't you think your mother will need you here? Jean will be going back to Boston in October to her art cla.s.s, and Helen is only fourteen. I don't think it would matter, if you only visited them for a couple of months, but supposing Uncle Ca.s.sius took a fancy to you." Mr. Robbins'

eyes twinkled as he watched Kit's grave face.

"You mean," she said, "supposing he decided that my brain measured up to his expectations of Jerry, Jr., and they wanted me to stay all winter?

Couldn't I go to school there, just as well as here? You know, Dad, I'm really not a child any longer. Don't you realize that I'm fifteen and a half?"

"Reaching years of discretion, aren't you, girlie?" smiled her father. "I suppose it would do you a lot of good in a broadening way to go through a new experience like this."

"I'm not thinking about that," Kit sent back an understanding gleam of fun, "but I'm perfectly positive that it would do Uncle Ca.s.sius and Aunt Daphne an awful lot of good."

"Then we must not deprive them of the opportunity. Do you think so, Hiram?"

Hiram stuck his head through the clambering vines and cl.u.s.tering leaves, like a tousled freckle-faced New England faun.

"Couldn't do no harm either way, s'far as I can see," he said, judiciously. "And if the old folks need any sort of discipline, I'd certainly start Miss Kit after them."

CHAPTER V

SHEPHERD SWEETINGS

That was the end of August. Cousin Roxy heartily approved of the plan, and said no doubt the fire down at Greenacres had been a direct dispensation of Providence.

"You were all of you settling down into a rut before it happened, and the old place needed a thorough going over anyhow. You know you couldn't have afforded it, Jerry, if it hadn't been for the fire insurance money coming in so handy like. Now, you'll all move back the first part of the winter, with the new furnace set up, and no cracks for the wind to whistle through. Jean will be started off on her path of glory, and I don't think Kit's a mite too young to be fluttering her wings a bit. Land alive, Elizabeth, you ought to be so thankful that you've got children with any get up and get to them in this day and age. The Judge and I were saying just the other night it seems as if most of the young folks up around here haven't got any pluck or initiative at all. They're born to feel that they're heirs of grace, and most of them are sure of having a farm or wood-lot in their own right, sooner or later."

So the steamer trunk stood open most of the time, and Kit prepared for her pilgrimage to Delphi. Mr. Robbins was inclined to take it as rather a good joke on the Dean, but the mother bird could not get over a certain little feeling of conscience in the matter, perhaps because she could remember her own visit with her uncle and aunt, and still retained a certain feeling of veneration for the two old people. But the rest of the family pinned its faith on Kit's persuasive adaptability.

Helen and Doris, especially, felt that, if anything, the Robbins family was conferring a high favor on the "Oracle of Delphi." Kit had always been the starter and organizer ever since they could remember, and Helen especially dreaded going back to school without her.

"Piney and Sally will go over with you," Kit told her, cheerfully, "and just think of the wonderful letters you'll have from me, Helenita. Miss Cogswell says that I always s.h.i.+ne best when I wield the pen of a ready writer, and I'll tell you all the news of Hope College. By the way, mother told me last night that she's pretty sure in those little family colleges they run a 'prep' department, which takes in the last two years of high school. Perhaps I could persuade them that the great-grandniece of Ca.s.sius Cato would be a deserving object of their consideration. Don't forget to pack my skates, Helen. I loaned them to you last, and they're hanging in your closet."

Cousin Roxy decided to have a farewell party, two nights before Kit left, and the girls were delighted. Any party launched by Cousin Roxy promised novelty and excitement.

A big dancing platform was built on the lawn under the great elms, and rows of j.a.panese lanterns hung like glowworms all among the branches.

Cady Graves was there with his violin, and called out for the dancing, but Jean took the piano between times in the house, and the girls and boys gathered around her, Billie leading in the old college songs they all knew best.

It really seemed as though there were a special moon hung up in the August sky just for the occasion. It was so richly luminous, and as Doris said, so near you. The children had been playing forfeits, and in Gilead you played games at parties until you were at least twenty. Piney Haddock was giving out the forfeits, sitting blindfolded on a chair, while Jean held them over her head, calling out with each one:

"Heavy, heavy hangs over your head, What shall the owner do to redeem it?"

Whereupon Piney would have to respond interestedly,

"Fine or superfine?"

It happened that Kit's little turquoise forget-me-not ring was the particular forfeit dangling over Piney's head, when Billie stuck his head in at the open window with a couple of other boys, and Piney lifted her chin at the sound of his voice.

"She must catch Billie Ellis, and bring him back to kneel at my feet, and hand over his forfeit."

Billie had evaded this, escaping with Banty Herrick, and the big Peckham boy, to show them his Belgian hares. Billie never had liked kissing games, and one of the Judge's favorite stories was how he had tried to give Billie a birthday party once, when he was seven years old. Most of the guests were the Judge's friends, with a small scattering of youngsters, and it appeared that just as the Judge had lined up some sweet-faced old ladies to kiss Billie, Billie had been found missing. Later he was located, clad only in overalls, leading the whole string of other children to a ruined sawmill that stood on a winding stream below the house.

So to-night the spirit of adversity whirled him about from the driveway, and he sped down the long lane with Kit in fast pursuit. Overhead the mulberry trees met in a leafy arcade, and out of the hazel thicket a whippoorwill called, flying low down the lane after the two darting forms, as if it were trying to find out what the excitement was about at that time of night. At the turn of the lane there were three apple trees, early Shepherd Sweetings, and here Billie slipped down and lay breathing heavily, his hands hunting for windfalls in the tall gra.s.s. Kit pa.s.sed him by, speeding the full length of the lane, and bringing up at the end of the log-run, before the old mill.

"Billie Ellis, you come out of there," she called. "I've got my slippers wet already chasing after you, and I'm not going to climb all over those old timbers hunting for you."

Only the whippoorwill answered, calling now from a clump of elderberry bushes close by the water's edge, and while she stood listening, there was the dull splash in the pond where some big bullfrog had taken alarm at her coming.

Billie gathered a goodly supply of apples, and stole after her in the shadows.