Part 6

Kit turned, expecting to face one of the usual blandly smiling Egyptian pieces of art, with a few wings scattered over it here and there. But instead, there stood in the center of the table a strangely attenuated figure about three feet high. It had a head that was a cross between an intelligent antelope and a rather toplofty baby rat. Its arms were extended at sharp angles, and seemed to be pointing in arch accusation at someone. Wings spread fanwise from the shoulders, and its feet were like those of a griffin.

“I never thought it would look just like that, did you, Billie?” Kit asked confidentially, when they started back to the campus later.

“Well, I knew what to expect, because we’ve been going to the Smithsonian Institute pretty often,” replied Billie. “Some of them look worse than that. But they can’t beat our own Alaskan and Mexican ones. I wonder what people were thinking about back in those days to worship that sort of thing?”

But Kit caught sight of five of the girls just rounding the corner and she waved to them to come over, much to Billie’s inward disgust. While he thoroughly approved of Kit, he viewed the average girl with indifference. But Kit introduced him in a casual manner which put him at his ease, and when they started up the path, it was Tony Conyer who had taken possession of Billie, and was interesting him by telling of her father’s big stock farm in northern Wisconsin.

They found Frank Howard waiting for them outside the boys’ dorm and Clayton was with him. The girls got Kit aside and Amy faced her accusingly.

“You never told us a word about this boy,” she declared, “and all the time you’ve had him up your sleeve. Explain please.”

Kit laughed at them and said, “Well, he’s a relative, if you must know. He’s my father’s first cousin’s husband’s grandson. Now what are you going to do about it?”

Rather mollified, the girls rejoined the boys on the steps in front of the dorm. “I suppose Hope looks pretty small to you after the universities back East,” Georgia said to Billie.

“Looks swell to me,” returned Billie. “I think you can have lots more fun in a place like this than you can at the big schools. But don’t get the idea I’m going to college now, I’m just at prep school and taking up a few extra courses outside with Frank.”

“What kind of courses?” asked Georgia.

“Science and physics, but specially entomology and forestry. He’s in government service. I wish I knew all he does. It’s wonderful to have a friend like Frank.”

Kit was behind the others with Amy and Anne. Now that they had joined the others, and the girls were talking about Frank also, she had become strangely silent.

“You don’t know him very well, do you?” Amy asked. “I mean, he isn’t related to you.”

Kit shook her head with bland indifference.

“He’s a friend of Billie’s. I only met him at home when he came to chase a gypsy moth in Elmhurst.”

She did not add that with Tommy’s help and able cooperation, she had managed to curtail the chase of the gypsy moth, temporarily, by holding the chaser captive in the family corncrib, but she inwardly suspected that Frank was remembering it. Every once in a while she caught him looking at her, with a look of amused retrospection that made her vaguely uncomfortable.

As they left the campus, Georgia, leading with Billie, took the street that led to the bluffs overlooking the lake, and somehow or other in the scramble down the narrow pathways, Kit found Frank at her elbow. No one could have been more dignified or distant in her manner than Kit, but Frank refused to be frozen out.

“I’ve just found out something, Kit,” he said genially. “I forgave you long ago for locking me up in your corncrib and nearly landing me in the local jail, but you don’t forgive me one bit for trespassing in your berry patch.”

Kit’s profile tilted ever so slightly upward. She had thoroughly made up her mind that very day when Mr. Hicks made his memorable and fruitless journey to Woodhow that not even government experts had any right to climb over fences into people’s private property without first asking permission. Perhaps the sudden popularity of the trespasser with all the rest of the family had something to do with Kit’s stand against him. Even Doris had remarked that she didn’t see how Kit could ever have imagined that a person looking like Frank could be a berry thief.

“I don’t want you to forgive me,” she said calmly. “I’ve never been one bit sorry for it. I think you ought to have come up to the house and asked permission to go in there. And you never said that you were sorry. It always seemed to me as if you rather acted as if you thought it was a good joke”--she hesitated a moment, before adding pointedly--“on me.”

“Suppose I apologize now.” Frank’s tone was absolutely serious, but Kit, with one quick look at the precipitous path ahead of them, laughed.

“Not here, please. Wait until we hit the level shore. You do really have to pay attention on this path, or you miss your footing and toboggan all at once.”

“Then, suppose,” he persisted, “we just consider that I have apologized. And if you accept, you can raise your right hand at me.”

Kit immediately raised her left one. Before he could say any more, she had hurried ahead and caught up with the rest.

14. The Secret in the Urn

It was not until after they had gone, when Kit was by herself, that she remembered all Billie had told her at the very last of his stay.

They had walked along the lake shore together, a little behind the others, after they had visited the Flambeau family.

“You haven’t told me anything at all,” Kit said, “about home. When were you in Elmhurst last?”

“Just before we came here,” Billie answered.

“Was everything all right?” Billie hesitated. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Billie, tell me if there is anything. You can’t give me any nervous shocks at all, and I’m dying to find an excuse to get back home.”

“Why, there isn’t anything the matter, exactly,” Billie said cheerfully, but with a reservation in his tone that made Kit impatient. “The only thing that I know about, I heard Grandfather telling Uncle Tom. I don’t suppose I ought to repeat it either.”

“Honestly, Billie, you make me so exasperated at times. How dare you keep back any news of my family from me?”

“It was something about losing some stocks or dividends or something like that. I guess it hit Grandfather, too, but I heard him say that there wasn’t a farm up there that couldn’t support itself, properly run, and he guessed they’d all weather the storm.”

Billie was inclined to take an optimistic view of the whole affair. “Grandfather said that there was no cause for worry,” he went on. “It was just a case of pitch in and get your living out of the farms again.”

“Yes,” said Kit with scorn, “get your living out of the farms. That’s all very well for him to say, when he’s got everything to do with, and twenty of the best cows in the county, but we moved up there on hope and a shoestring. And we’ve never really raised anything except children and chickens.”

“Frank says your place, if it was properly worked, would make one of the finest fruit farms up there, ’cause your land all slopes to the south as far as the river. He says if he had it he’d sell off the heavy timber for cash and put the money right into hardy varieties of fruit and hogs.”

Kit laughed. “Can’t you see Doris’s face over the hogs, with all her aristocratic ideas? Did he tell Dad that?”

“I don’t know,” Billie said doubtfully. “Uncle Tom’s kind of hard to get confidential with over his own affairs, but I wouldn’t worry, Kit, if I were you. Things always come out all right.”

“They do not,” returned Kit calmly. “Even so, thanks ever so much for telling me, Billie. You may have changed the course of destiny, because I can tell you now I’m going home.”

After dinner that night Kit was out for a walk alone with only Sandy for company. Kit was wondering whether it would be best to write first to her mother or to Jean. Jean would be in New York anyway, so perhaps she wouldn’t know any more about it than Kit did. How she wished to know just exactly what the family’s plans were for the winter.

Finally she decided to write to Becky. Even though her decision might not be a favorable one, you always felt sure you were getting it straight without any affectionate bias.

Accordingly, a confidential appeal went East, and back came the reply by return mail, as Kit had known it would.

Dear Kit,

I had been thinking about you when your letter came, so I suppose our thoughts must have crossed.

There’s no doubt at all but what your mother needs you badly right here, especially with Jean in New York. What Billie told you was about the truth.

If I were you, I’d have a heart-to-heart talk with the Dean himself, and I know your mother will be just as relieved as can be to hear you’re homeward bound.

Lovingly, Becky.

Kit was delighted over the letter, and went directly to the Dean with its message. He was deeply engrossed in getting up his first notes and commentaries on the urn and statue. It had not seemed for the past two or three weeks as if he resided any longer in Delphi at all. Kit told Della she was positive he was wandering through Egypt all the time, the Egypt of five thousand years ago. And it was only the shadow of his self that seemed to sit closeted for hours in the study.

He hardly glanced up now as she came in, but smiled and nodded when he saw who it was, keeping on with his writing.

“Just hand me that volume on the second shelf to your right by the door. Second volume, _Explorations in Upper Egypt_, look up Seti the First in the index.”

Kit found the place and laid it before him, perching herself on one end of the desk, as she always did when she wanted to attract his attention. The little statuette of Annui smiled grotesquely down upon her from its pedestal. The urn stood in a handy place of honor upon the desk itself as the Dean had been deciphering the inscriptions upon it.

“I hate to disturb you, Uncle Bart,” Kit began, with the directness so characteristic of her, “but I really think I ought to go back home. You’ve been wonderful to give me such a long visit, and I’ve enjoyed the school work immensely, but somehow I begin to feel like a soldier who has been away on a furlough. It’s time for me to get back, because Mother needs me.”

The Dean glanced up in surprise; and came slowly out of his dream of concentration as the meaning of her words dawned upon him.

“Why, my dear child,” he exclaimed, “this is very sudden. There has never been any question about your going back, at least--” He coughed. “Not since we became acquainted with you. Has anything happened?”

“Why, nothing special--I mean, nothing tragic. It’s only this, Dad’s lost a lot of money all at once. He did have a little income, enough so we never have had to depend on the farm entirely, but now, even that has been swept away.”

“Tom never had any head for business.” The Dean tapped one hand lightly with his glasses in an absent-minded musing way that nearly drove Kit frantic. “But what can you do about it, my dear? Surely by returning at such a time you merely add to your father’s burdens.”

“No, I won’t,” Kit answered. “Because I’ve got a plan that I’ve been thinking about for ever and ever so long. I’m going to try and persuade Dad to let us put in hogs.”

“Hogs,” repeated the Dean in a baffled tone. “Hogs, my dear. Who ever heard of raising hogs when they could raise anything else at all?”

“Well, we’re going to if Dad will let me. I just can’t stay here in this beautiful place with nothing to worry over, while the family are all worried to death.”

There was silence in the old study. The Dean was looking straight at Annui as if for inspiration. He had laid out his own career himself, and had carried every ambition to completion and reality. The last twenty years had been years of fruition, of honors freely given, years of fulfillment. He had not been, like Judge Ellis, intolerant of other men’s failures; he had simply ignored them, never feeling any responsibility toward the weaker ones who fell in the race. In his way, he prided himself on a gentle, aloof philosophy of life which left him the boundaries of the study as a horizon of happiness.

Probably not until that moment had he realized the gradual revolutionary process Kit had been putting him through ever since her arrival. She had trained him into having an interest in other people and things, until now it was impossible for him not to see the picture of Woodhow as she did. He resolved to help Tom Craig out as well.

“How did you find out about this, my dear?” he asked.

“Well,” Kit replied, honestly, “partly from Billie and partly from a letter from Becky. You know Becky, don’t you, Uncle Bart?”

The Dean’s eyes twinkled reminiscently. “Oh, yes, I remember Rebecca well. She used to bully me outrageously. But you’re perfectly right, my dear. I can quite see why you feel that you are needed. You had better start for home as soon as you can.”

The next thing was to break the news gently and convincingly to the family. Kit figured it out from all sides, and finally decided to walk right up to the horns of the dilemma in a fearless attack. Writing back a long, newsy letter to her mother, she simply tacked on the postscript, “Don’t be at all surprised to see me arrive around Christmas.”

The girls took her coming departure with many objections, but Kit was not to be persuaded to stay. The Saturday before she left the many friends she had made came over in the afternoon to say goodbye. Late in the day, Kit saw Jeannette Flambeau coming up the drive.

“It was awfully nice of you to come, Jeannette,” she exclaimed. “I’ve been watching for you.”

“I tried to come earlier, but I couldn’t,” smiled Jeannette. “Will you write to me when you are away?”

“I’d love to. You know it’s a queer thing, Jeannette, but really and truly, out of all the girls I have met here I feel better acquainted with you than with any of them.”

Kit said this rather slowly, as if it were a sort of self-revelation which she had just discovered that minute. And yet it was true. She had enjoyed the class friendships at Hope immensely, but Jeannette had seemed to stand out from the rest of the girls as a distinctly interesting personality.

Jeannette smiled at Kit’s remark.

“I have heard my grandmother say that in her girlhood her people of the northern forests pledged their friendships by saying, ‘While the grass grows and the waters run, so long shall we be friends.’” She turned and smiled at Kit her grave-eyed slow smile. “I will say that to you now, before you go.”

Kit laid one arm around her shoulders. “Me too,” she answered, “sounds like the blood-brother vow they used to take.”

The next evening Kit was to leave Delphi. She found it hard to say goodbye to her aunt and uncle.

“We shall miss you, Kit,” said Della, “but if it gives you any pleasure, my dear, I want to tell you it was your coming which opened my eyes to the folly of sitting with empty hands while there was work to be done. I don’t think I can ever belong to the rocking-chair squad again, without a guilty conscience.”

Kit hugged her fervently. “Oh, but you’re a dear, Aunt Della, to say such things. I only wish I could stay right here and be in two places at once. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned here, organization.” Kit said this very firmly and earnestly. “Back home they say I know just what I want to do, but I don’t know how to do it. Now, I know what I want to do. I want to go back home and organize.”

“The Dean wanted to have a little talk with you before dinner, dear. I think you’d better go in now, because we want to reach the station in plenty of time. Don’t talk too long. You know how he is when he gets absorbed in anything.”

Kit promised and joined the Dean. He had carried back the statue of Annui and stood before it regarding it with perplexity. Kit slipped her arm through his. It seemed as though there had sprung up a new comradeship and understanding between them since their last talk.

“Won’t he tell you his secrets, Uncle Bart?” she asked. “He has such an aggravating smile, just as if he were amused at baffling you.”

“I am baffled,” the Dean conceded genially. “I’ve reached a certain point and there is a blank which no historic record seems to fill. I thought when I had restored the inscription on the urn that it would tell me several of the missing points, but it seems to be merely a sort of sacred invocation. I am amazed at the urn being hollow. Every other memorial urn which I found during our excavations in Egypt was sealed, and upon being opened we always found rolls of papyrus within. I am disappointed.”

Kit lifted the urn very carefully and stared at it, reflectively. “What does the inscription say?” Kit asked.

“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 fingertip, bending forward as he did so. “It says, ‘Amenotaph, born of Thoth, shall reign in wisdom. Kings shall serve at his foot stool. 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, what her uncle had just read. Then she shook the urn close to her ear.

“My dear child, do be careful,” cried the Dean, “it’s 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 Bart. I’ll bet 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 cipher. 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 cipher, while Kit stared at him delightedly. After all, it was gratifying, she thought, to have somebody in the family who could take a little remark made thousands of years ago in Egypt and make sense out of it today. 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 studied the urn again and with the fingertip she traced the inscription and stopped when she came to a small circle in black and red outline.

“Do you suppose Ra lives here, Uncle Bart?” 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. “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 send it to Washington. I would not take the responsibility of trying to remove it myself.”

“Oh, jeepers, it seems awful to have to wait so long,” Kit exclaimed regretfully. “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, under the pressure of her thumb, the circle of Ra depressed and pushed slowly through. 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 Bart,” 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 that the Dean 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 newborn child, 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.”

15. Home Again

Kit arrived in Nantic a little past noon in the middle of the first snow storm of the winter. She was so glad to see Mr. Briggs’s smiling face on the platform, that she almost threw her arms around him, as she jumped from the platform of the train.

“Well, well,” he said, “didn’t expect to see you around so soon, Kit.”

“It’s good to be back, Mr. Briggs,” said Kit, as she looked around for the one taxi that Nantic had. She had not told her family just when she was arriving, so no one was there to meet her. She located the cab and after a hurried goodbye to Mr. Briggs she got in and was soon on the way up the familiar highway.

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 barn, and leaning forward she gave a shrill whistle.

Tommy turned in the direction of the whistle and when he saw who it was he came along the drive at a dead run. Before Kit could catch her breath, the big front door opened and there was the rest of the family. The reunion was indeed a happy one, everyone laughing and talking at once and deluging Kit with questions. It wasn’t until they were all settled in the living-room that Kit obligingly answered all their questions, telling them about Delphi, Hope College, the friends she had made, and last of all, the secret she and Uncle Bart had discovered in the Egyptian urn.

After the Christmas holidays when Jean had gone back to New York again, Kit found her opportunity of laying her summer plan before her mother and father. She had discarded hogs for a new idea she had thought up on the train coming home. Before Jean had left, Kit had told her about her scheme and together they had worked out the details. With Jean’s additional suggestions in mind, Kit felt she was ready to approach her parents.

“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 kids manage it. Couldn’t we start a regular summer camp? You know those hunters’ cabins that are scattered along the valley would be ideal. Jean was telling me before she left about an artists’ colony up in the Catskills, where they have cabins fitted up so that you can cook in them and everything. 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 Becky approved of the scheme highly.