Part 3

Yet Kit was positive now that neither the Dean nor his sister had come to meet her. She stood in the waiting room wearing a dark brown gabardine coat with a brown hat to match. There was about her an air of buoyant and friendly self-possession, which always endeared her to even casual acquaintances. Therefore it was no wonder that Rex Bellamy glanced at her several times with interest, even while his gaze sought through the crowd for a young New England boy, bound for Delphi, Wisconsin.

But Kit noticed Rex Bellamy. Noticed his alert anxiety as he walked up and down, eyeing every newcomer. He was eighteen or nineteen, and unmistakably looking for someone. Even while Kit watched, she saw a girl of about her own age hurry up to him. Her voice reached Kit plainly, as she said, “I’ve looked up and down that end, and I’m positive he isn’t there. Oh, but the Dean will lecture you, Rex, if you miss him.”

At this identical moment, Rex’s eyes met a pair of dancing, mischievous ones, and Kit crossed over to where they stood.

“I do believe you must be looking for me,” she said. “I’m Kit Craig.”

“Oh, but we were expecting your brother,” exclaimed the other girl, eagerly.

“I know, but you see my brother’s only twelve,” said Kit, “and the family thought he was too young to come. I begged to come instead. I’m afraid the Dean made a little mistake, didn’t he? Do you think he’ll mind so very much when he sees me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. The House Under the Bluff

DEAR FAMILY,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love, Kit.

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

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

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

“Bright,” suggested Della.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stealing?” repeated Kit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. A Square Deal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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