it appeared that uncle cassius lived strictly up to tradition, for it had been over fifteen years since any word had been received from the oracle at delphi, as the girls dubbed him from the very first. the letter which broke the long silence was read aloud several times that day, the girls especially searching between its lines for any hidden sentiment or hint of family affection.
"i don't see why on earth he tries to be generous when he doesn't know how," helen said, musingly. "i wonder if he's got bushy gray hair and whiskers, like somebody we were studying about yesterday. who was that, kit?"
kit glanced up from uncle cassius' letter with a preoccupied expression.
"whiskers?" she repeated. "why, i don't know; walt whitman, ibsen, longfellow, joaquin miller? tolstoi had long straggly ones, didn't he?"
"these were kind of bushy ones. i think it was carlyle."
"wait a minute while i read this thing over carefully again," kit warned them. "i think while we're alone we ought to discuss it freely. mother just took it as if it were a case of 'which shall it be, which shall it be, i looked at john, john looked at me.' it seems to me, since it concerns us vitally, that we ought to have some selection in the matter ourselves."
"but kit, dear, you didn't read carefully," jean interposed with a little laugh. "see here," she followed the writing with her finger tip. "he says, 'send me the boy.' there isn't any boy."
"no," kit agreed, thoughtfully, "but i presume there should have been a boy. i'm more like father than any of you, and i'd love to have been the boy in the family. i wonder why he said that."
"well, it certainly shuts off any further negotiations because 'there ain't 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 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:—
"i trust both you and elizabeth are enjoying good health, and that this finds you both facing a more prosperous time than when i heard last from you.
"it has occurred to both daphne and myself that we may be able to relieve you of part of your responsibility and care, at least for a short time. if the experiment should prove advantageous to all concerned we might be able to arrange a longer stay. one suggestion, however, i feel privileged to make. we would prefer that you would send the boy, as you know this is a college town, and i am sure it would broaden his views to come west, even for a short time. i need hardly add that we will do all in our power to make his stay a pleasant and profitable one.
"another point to consider is this. i would like to interest him in a few of my little hobbies, archæology, geology, etc. i have delved deeply into the mysteries of the past, and feel i should pass what i have learned on as a heritage to youth.
"trusting that you and elizabeth will be able to coincide with our views in the matter, i remain,
"yours faithfully,
cassius c. peabody."
"you know, dad," here kit slipped her area persuasively around her father's neck and patted his shoulder, "you've always said yourself that i was the 'david copperfield' in the family. don't you know how the child was to be named after his aunt, betsy trotwood, and she never really forgave him for turning out to be a boy instead of a girl. mother has told me how she named me jerrold, jr., and anyway i've done the best i could to live up to it. billie says i'm an awfully good pal, and he'd much rather talk to me than any of the boys he knows at school, because i understand what he's driving at."
"but don't you think your mother will need you here? jean will be going back to boston in october to her art class, and helen is only fourteen. i don't think it would matter, if you only visited them for a couple of months, but supposing uncle cassius took a fancy to you." mr. robbins' eyes twinkled as he watched kit's grave face.
"you mean," she said, "supposing he decided that my brain measured up to his expectations of jerry, jr., and they wanted me to stay all winter? couldn't i go to school there, just as well as here? you know, dad, i'm really not a child any longer. don't you realize that i'm fifteen and a half?"
"reaching years of discretion, aren't you, girlie?" smiled her father. "i suppose it would do you a lot of good in a broadening way to go through a new experience like this."
"i'm not thinking about that," kit sent back an understanding gleam of fun, "but i'm perfectly positive that it would do uncle cassius and aunt daphne an awful lot of good."
"then we must not deprive them of the opportunity. do you think so, hiram?"
hiram stuck his head through the clambering vines and clustering leaves, like a tousled freckle-faced new england faun.
"couldn't do no harm either way, s'far as i can see," he said, judiciously. "and if the old folks need any sort of discipline, i'd certainly start miss kit after them."
