Kit of Greenacre Farm | Page 9

perspective."
"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 Cassius and Aunt Daphne a pile of good, I know."
"It sounds right enough, dear," Mrs. Robbins said, her brown eyes full
of amusement, "but we can't very well disguise you as a boy, and Uncle
Cassius 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 Cassius 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 Cassius 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 Cassius' 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 spaces 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 Cassius' feelings."
Mr. Bobbins adjusted his eye-glasses, smiling the little whimsical smile
that Kit loved, and together they read the missive again----
"MY DEAR JERROLD:--