Kit of Greenacre Farm | Page 8

no sech animal' in the 'robin's' roster. And no matter what you say, Kit,
I don't think you're 'specially like father at all. He hasn't a quick temper
and he's not a single bit domineering."
Kit leaned over her tenderly.
"Dearest, am I domineering to you? Have I crushed your spirit, and
made you all weak and pindlin'? I'm awfully sorry. I didn't mean that
my bad traits were inherited from Dad. What I meant was my glorious
initiative and craving for novelty. Just at the moment I can't think of
anything that would be more interesting or adventurous than going out
to Uncle Cassius, and trying to fulfill all his expectations."
"Thought you wanted to go out to the Alameda Ranch with Uncle Hal
more than anything in the world, a little while ago. You're the original
weather-vane, Kit."
"Well, I wouldn't give a snap of my finger for a person who couldn't
face new emergencies and feel within them the surge of--of----"
"Don't declaim in the family circle, Kit. We admit the surge, but would
you really and truly be willing to go to this place? I don't even know
what state it's in."

"The Lady Jean is forgetful of her mythology," chanted Kit. "Delphi is
in Greece, somewhere near Delos, and I don't think it's so very far from
the grove where Atalanta took refuge before she ran her races."
Helen glanced up in her absent-minded way.
"Delphi?" she said, musingly. "Wasn't that the place where they used to
put a tripod over a rift in the rock and a veiled priestess sat down and
waited for Apollo's message to come to her? We had that up at school
when we took up Greece."
"I shall take a milking stool out with me," said Kit, promptly, "and if
the situation is not already filled, I shall be the veiled priestess of
Delphi."
There was a footstep in the long hallway, and the mother bird came in
from the kitchen. The kitchen at Maple Lawn still bore the stamp of
Cousin Roxy's taste. It was more a living-room than a "cookery." There
was no library proper here, only the parlor, a large corner bedroom, and
a dining-room which took up the width of the house except for the hall.
This latter was the favorite consulting room of the girls, and to-day
they were all busily paring early apples and quinces to put down in
stone crocks, against the coming of winter days.
"Mother," called Helen, "were you ever in Delphi, where Uncle Cassius
lives?"
Mrs. Robbins sat down on the arm of Jean's chair and smiled at the
eager faces upturned to hers.
"Just once, long ago when I was about eight years old. We were
passing through on our way east from California, and mother stayed for
about a week at Delphi. It's a little college town on Lake Nadonis,
about twelve miles inland from Lake Michigan, and perhaps sixty miles
north of Chicago on the big bluffs that line the shore nearly all the way
to Milwaukee. Uncle Cassius was a first settler there, I believe. You
don't have to be very old to have been a first settler in Wisconsin. I
think about the first thing he helped establish there was Hope College. I

don't remember so very much about it, girls, it was so long ago. I know
I loved the bluffs and the little winding paths that led up from the shore
below, but it seems to me Uncle Cassius' house was rather cheerless
and formal. He was a good deal of a scholar and antiquarian. Aunt
Daphne seemed to me just a deprecating little shadow that trotted after
him, and made life smooth."
Kit listened with the attentive curiosity of a squirrel, and Jean, who
knew every changing expression on her face, was sure she was having a
little private debate with herself.
"I don't think," continued Mrs. Robbins, easily, "that it is such a
misfortune after all our not having a boy to fill his order. It wouldn't be
a very cheerful or sympathetic home for any young person."
"Oh, but mother, dear," Kit burst forth, eagerly. "Think what glorious
fun it would be to train them, and make them understand how much
more interesting you can make life if you only take the right point of
view."
"Yes, but supposing what seemed to be the right point of view to you,
Kit, was not the right point of view to them at all. Every one looks at
life from his own angle."
"Carlota always said that, too," Jean put in. "I remember at our art class
each student would see the subject from a different angle and sketch
accordingly. Carlota said it was exactly like life, where each one gets
his own