Kit of Greenacre Farm Part 4

"Well, I'm not going to stay out here all night waiting for you," Kit said, decisively, addressing the wide dark entrance to the mill, when all at once there came his voice, directly behind her shoulder.

"Why didn't you try to catch me? I was resting back under the apple tree.

Let's sit down over the falls and eat some. If Piney's waiting for me to kneel in front of her, she'll wait all night. I'd like to see myself kneeling in front of a girl!"

The words had hardly left his lips, before Kit played an old-time schoolgirl trick on him. Catching him by his collar, she twirled him about with an odd twist until he knelt in front of her. Although they were just about of an age, she was taller and stronger, and Billie shook himself ruefully when he rose.

"You always catch a fellow off guard," he said.

"Do you good," she retorted serenely. "Ever since you went away to school, you've had a high and mighty opinion of yourself. I don't know what will become of you after I've gone away, and there's no one who really knows how to make you behave. Aren't these apples bully though? Do you suppose they'll mind very much if we stay just a few minutes? Don't you love this old pond, Billie? Remember your flat-bottomed boat that always leaked when we used to go fishing in it. How I hated to take turns bailing it out."

Billie dipped into his inner coat pocket and drew forth a little leather bill fold, somewhat sheepishly.

"I've got a snap shot here that I wanted you to take out with you. It's funny you just happened to speak about it. That hat nearly covered your face, but anybody could tell it was you, Kit. It was the day we got caught in the rain, when we were out after pickerel, and when the sun came out, Ben came along, and snapped us with my camera."

Kit took the little photograph in her hand. There was plenty of light to see it by. The little old, red, flat-bottomed boat out in midstream, with Billie standing, barelegged to his knees, straddling from the stem seat to the rear middle one, while he strove persuasively with a big pickerel. Kit was half kneeling in the other end of the boat, bailing for dear life, dressed in an old middy and wash skirt, with a boy's farm hat pulled low over her eyes.

"Wouldn't it be strange, Billie, if either of us were famous some day,"

she said, thoughtfully, "and this picture would just be priceless? You know, that's one thing awfully nice about us two. We've always appreciated each other so much. I know you're going to be somebody special. Maybe it will just be in natural history, but I wish it were exploring, or something awfully adventurous."

Billie laughed comfortably, perching himself just below her on the heavy timbers of the old sluice gate.

"Grandfather says I have a great responsibility on my shoulders, because I'm the last of the Ellis family. He says there's always been an Ellis in the State Legislature at Hartford, ever since there was a Legislature, and just as soon as I'm old enough, he's going to set me to reading law.

Gee, I wish he wouldn't. Think of being shut up all day long in an office."

Far down the lane they heard the others calling them and Kit sprang up, scattering the apples as she did so.

"I'd forgotten all about the party," she exclaimed. "Anyway, I'm glad we had a chance to talk, because I won't see you again before I leave. If I were you, I'd just read and study everything I could lay my hands on about entymology, all the time I was in school, and then when the Judge sees that you're in dead earnest about it, he'll let you go on if Cousin Roxy says so. I heard Dad say that Mr. Howard knew more about insects than any man he'd ever met, and that he was considered one of the coming experts in government work. Why, Billie, it's just like a great surgeon or doctor, who is able to discover a certain germ that can be used as a toxin, only you doctor Mother Nature."

"I know," Billie agreed, enthusiastically. "There was some fellow who discovered the cause of the wheat blight in the south a few years ago, and somebody else is trying to land whatever is killing our chestnuts off.

Kit, you're a bully pal. If it wasn't for you, I don't know whether I'd ever have seen a chance to win out or not, but you do spur a fellow on."

Kit laughed, and tagged him on the shoulder as she broke into a run.

"You're it," she cried. "Don't give any one else the credit for starting you off in the way you know you ought to go. Just take a good deep breath and race for it."

CHAPTER VI

EXPECTING "KIT"

Mr. Robbins had answered the first letter from Delphi, under Kit's careful supervision, and the acceptance was couched in language ambiguous enough to please even her.

It aroused no suspicions whatever in the minds of Dean Peabody or Miss Daphne. The only question was, who was to meet the child in Chicago. The through express would leave _him_ there, and in order to connect with the Wisconsin trains it was necessary to make the change over to the Northwestern Depot.

Miss Daphne was far more perturbed over it than her brother. One of the latter's favorite mottoes was inscribed in old English lettering over his desk:

"_Never set in motion forces which you cannot control_."

Having set in motion the coming guest, he believed firmly that an unfaltering Fate would direct his footsteps safely to Delphi. Ca.s.sius Cato Peabody had been peculiar all his life. He had been a peculiar boy, unsettled, studious, impractical. Miss Daphne was his younger sister, and ever since her girlhood had tried to give him all the love and encouragement that others refused. She had trotted after him faithfully and happily on all of his exploring expeditions. Perhaps one reason why these had been so successful was because somehow she had always managed to surround him with home comforts, even in the wilds of the upper Nile. The Dean had had his regular meals and clean changes of clothing in the shadow of Nineveh's ruins in far Chaldea, just as though he had been in his own domicile.

And perhaps the quaintest thing about it all was that Miss Daphne herself, no matter on what particular point of the globe she had happened to pitch her tent, had always retained her courage, although she had faced dangers that the average woman would have fled from. Perhaps she carried in her heart an unfailing faith that Providence could not deny her protection when she was enabling the Dean to give the benefit of his great gifts to the world.

Their house stood on the same hill as Hope College, the highest point in the rising ridge of bluffs along the Lake Sh.o.r.e at Delphi. It was built of dark red brick, a square double edifice, with long French windows and two rotunda shaped wings, somewhat in the French style. A grove of pine trees almost hid it from view on its street side, the stately Norway pines that Kit always loved. The back of the house looked directly out over the lake, and the land here was frankly left to nature. Trees, gra.s.s and underbrush rioted at will, until they suddenly ended on the brow of the bluff, where there was a sheer declivity of sand to the beach. Looking at it from below, Kit afterwards thought it was like a miniature section of the Yosemite, the sand had hardened into such fantastic shapes, and the strata in places was so plainly visible.

Mrs. Robbins' telegram arrived the night before Kit herself. It was brief and non-committal.

"Kit arrives Union Station, Chicago, Thursday, 10:22 A.M."

"Kit," repeated the Dean. "Humph! Nickname. Superfluous and derogatory."

Miss Daphne took the telegram from his desk with a little smile that was almost tremulous with excitement.

"It's probably the diminutive for Christopher, brother," she said. "I think it's a nice name. I always liked the legend of St. Christopher.

Somebody'll have to meet him down in Chicago. He might lose his head and take the wrong train."

"He's about fourteen, isn't he? Old enough to change from one train to another, and use his tongue if he's in doubt. When I was fourteen, Daphne, I was earning my own living working on a farm, summers, and going to a school in the winter time where we all had to work for our board. Never hurt us a bit. The greatest trait of character you can inculcate in a child is self-reliance."

Miss Daphne had a little way of appearing to listen while her brother expatiated on any of his favorite topics. It had grown to be a loving habit with her, and she had a way of answering absently.

"Yes, dear, I'm quite sure of it," which always satisfied him that he had her attention. But now, she sat looking out the window and thinking, a perplexed expression on her face. It had not altogether been her desire that the coming child should be a boy, although not one word had she breathed of this to Dean Peabody. Their lives had run in tranquil grooves.

Everything about their daily routine was as St. Paul suggested, "Decently and in order."

The determination to take one of the Greenacre brood had been a sudden one. The Dean had been reading somebody's theory about the obligations of age to youth.

"Daphne, my dear," he had remarked one evening, as the two sat quietly in the old library, "we have been leading very narrow, selfish lives, and we will suffer for it as we grow older. We have shut ourselves away from youth. I am seventy-four now, and what heritage am I leaving to the world beyond a few books of reference, and my collections? What I should do is to take some child, still in the impressionable stage, and impart to it all I know."

Miss Daphne glanced up with a little amused twinkle in her eyes.

"But, brother, what about the child? Surely you would require an exceptional child for such an experiment. One who would have the mentality to grasp all that you were trying to impart to it."

The Dean cogitated over this, pursing his lips and tapping his knuckles with his rimless eye-gla.s.ses.

"Possibly," he granted, "and yet, Daphne, surely there would be far more credit attached to planting the seed of knowledge where it needed much cultivating. It has surprised and amazed me up at the college to find that usually the children who appreciate an education are the farmer boys, and very often the foreign element."

Miss Daphne rocked to and fro gently. She knew her brother well enough to understand that this had become a fixed idea with him, and the easiest way out was to find him an impressionable child. And then, it happened that she thought of Elizabeth Ann Robbins, their niece, and all her nestful of young mouths to be satisfied with life's gifts and privileges. She remembered having one letter after the breaking up of the home on Long Island. This had told them of Mr. Robbins' illness and breakdown. But with the optimism that was inherent in every one of the family, there had been no appeal for aid or cry of despondency over the sudden change in their fortunes.

Several times the Dean had written to Mr. Robbins but always on archaeological topics. Some little point of controversy upon which he desired confirmation. Somehow material needs never seemed to suggest themselves to the Dean. Blessed with absolute self-reliance from his boyhood, he had educated and made a success of himself, and he could not understand how any one could falter or repine in the race. Particularly, if Nature had granted them any precious ratio of Peabody blood.

"Do you know, brother," began Miss Daphne, in the bright, abrupt little way she had, "I think it would be the right thing if we took one of the Robbins' children. There are four or five of them----"

"Boys or girls?" interrupted the Dean.

"Well, now I'm not quite sure, but if my memory serves me, I think there's a boy amongst them. I know the eldest girl is named Jean Daphne, because I've always sent her a silver spoon on her birthday since she was born.

They're all of them over ten, I am sure. Why don't you just write to Jerrold and make known your willingness? I am sure they would take it in the spirit in which it was offered."