Izola L. Forrester

“ It was just this, 'Carry on.' It's what we can't avoid, Kit, no matter whether we find ourselves blazing new trails through the wilderness or trying to find the way to happiness right here in little old Gilead. You have to 'carry on' for those who come after."
Jean called to her for some advice immediately, and she hurried up-stairs. Kit sat cogitating over what she had said, just as Stanley came through the orchard with a huge basket on his shoulder of early sweet apples, the first fruits of the Greenacre harvest. ”

“ 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." ”

“ It stood high upon the bluff, its college dominating the shady serenity of its quiet avenues.
"The Dean doesn't keep a carriage or car," said Rex as they alighted at the gray stone station covered with clambering vines. "Besides, he thought I was bringing a boy, who would not mind the hike up the hill!"
"I don't mind a bit," returned Kit. "I like it. It seems so good to find real hills after all. I thought everything out here was just prairie. 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 know." ”

“ Kit answered, practically, but with an affectionate squeeze that took away any offense from her words. "You know that old favorite saying of Cousin Roxy's, 'It's better to aim at the stars and hit the bar post, than to aim at the bar post and hit the ground.'"
Helen turned around, an anxious look in her blue eyes.
"You're always so matter-of-fact, Kit. You see, I am fourteen now, and it's about time I was having some kind of an ambition. Isn't there anything at all that you long to do more than anything in the world? ”

“ Anne declared with a sigh, as they rose to leave.
"We are late now," rejoined Kit, cheerfully. "They'll prize us all the more if we keep ourselves kind of scarce. Rex told me to order walnut sundae for him, and wait until he comes back."
Just at this moment Anne laid her finger on her lips and glanced impressively at a table on the other side of the room. There sat Amy with Peggy Porter and Norma, all of them dreamily imbibing ice cream sodas, just as though Shakespearian rehearsals were occasions unknown in their engagement calendars. ”

“ If Jean or Helen had been home, she knew perfectly well they would have been soft-hearted and lenient, but every berry on every bush was precious to Kit, and she felt that now was the appointed hour, as Cousin Roxy would have said.
Inside of a few minutes, Shad came back, perspiring and red faced, but filled with unholy glee. He dipped a tin bucket into the water pail.
"I've got him," he said, happily, "safe and sound in the corn-crib, and it's hotter than all get out in there. He can't escape unless he slips through a crack in the floor. ”

“ Kit announced proudly. "Do you remember, Piney, the place where Billie and I had our birch tepee long ago? He used to call it Turtle Cove. There's a dandy shore there, and canoeing on the lake above the Falls. I'd much rather have Honey and Ralph there than strangers."
"Well, you'll probably have me, too," Piney announced, "because I'm just dying to go camping. It seems so queer, Kit, that none of us ever thought of it before. Here are these glorious woods and hills around us, with miles and miles of land as wild as you'd find anywhere, yet we all cling to the little farm spots. ”

“ But the biggest surprise of all came when Bryan Ormond, who had stirred the musical circles of two worlds, took his place on the little country platform and played for them on his 'cello. The Judge and Mrs. Ellis enjoyed it just as the Robbinses did. It was a novel treat to hear the strains of Lizst and Chopin sounding in the purple silences of those old country hills, but when he had finished, Cynthy leaned over to Kit, who sat next to her and who was in an uplifted rhapsody of meditation. ”

“ When Kit came down the staircase, she glanced into the library and saw Marcelle in there alone, bending down before the long wall bookcases. Across the wide hall there were groups of boys and girls in the two long double parlors, laughing and talking together, and every couch and settee along the T-shaped hall was occupied, but Marcelle was alone.
Whoever had built Hope College had managed to work out some of his dreams of old world beauty. The library was wainscoted in some dull satin finished wood, with the graining of olive wood. ”

“ Kit said, looking around her speculatively. "I wish I were going to live here. Peggy, you'll have to entertain us often. It's so kind of solitary and restful, isn't it, up here?"
"Solitary," scoffed Peggy. "I've been here four days getting settled, and you might just as well call the side show of a circus solitary. There isn't even the ghost of privacy. I'm mobbed every time I try to sit and meditate."
"Who wants to meditate, anyway?" asked Amy. "Don't you feel 'the rushing torrent of ambition's flood sweeping away the barriers' and—what else did the Dean say?" ”

“ Kit helped her select a dull violet goods, with white underslip that showed through the slashes in the sleeves. Anne had been hovering over an old rose that absolutely killed any glint of color in her light brown hair.
"Never, never," warned Kit, "let old rose come near you, if you've got freckles or sandy hair. Don't you notice, Anne, how I cling to all the soft pastel nondescript tones? That's because my eldest sister is an artist, and we all have to live up to it more or less now. When Jean wants a new dress she slips away and communes with nature, until she's hit the right tone values. ”

“ You have no idea, Kit, how I have dreaded going back to the city and leaving things as they are. Dad seems to get so discouraged now when matters go wrong, and that throws the load of keeping up right on mother's shoulders."
"I know it," Kit rejoined, "but if it's anything to you all, I'd be willing to bet anything that right this minute Uncle Cassius is springing some glad tidings down-stairs that will turn the tide of fortune."
"Oh, Kit," begged Doris, "don't you and Jean talk like that, because I can't understand what you're driving at; tell it all out at once." ”

“ 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 Cassius?" she asked. "He has such an aggravating smile, just as if he were amused at baffling you." ”

“ Robbins looked down at the eager, troubled face, and there was a note of understanding sympathy in her voice, as she said:
"You're my only restless spirit, Kit, always reaching out after the mighty, real things of life, where Jean and Helen follow hopes and dreams. Realities are very hard to face sometimes even when we find them."
"Yes, I know," Kit said, shortly. "Stanley's going to France, and I haven't even found out yet how to thank him properly for fishing me out of the river and saving my life. I wish Billie had done it." ”

“ She lived each day as it came with an unconquerable optimism, such as no one else except Cousin Roxy seemed to possess in the family.
"Don't worry, Kit," Mrs. Ellis was wont to say to her, cheerily. "Good works and an abiding faith yoked up with a sense of humor will carry any one to the golden gates."
And perhaps secretly Kit had always considered personal ambition a little private form of selfishness. As she ransacked her mind now, trying to find her own ambition and get it safely on a pin for examination like one of Billie's specimens, only her old-time love of forestry answered her. ”

“ She had never felt an affinity with "haunts of ancient peace" like Jean and Helen. Only that week she had been reading in one of the Dean's early English histories of real rooftrees. How, in the earliest times, primitive people built their houses around some selected giant oak or other king of the forest, with the massive trunk itself upholding the structure. If she could have done so, Kit would have gladly selected for herself her own special tree in the forest primeval, rather than have fallen heir to any ancestral castle such as Helen hankered for. ”

“ Robbins and the Mother Bird tried to expostulate, the Dean only laughed at them, brushing their arguments aside.
"Why, if I were to turn over everything I own to the clan of Robbins, I could hardly pay back all that Kit has done for me. I'm a new man, Jerry. Sometimes I feel like a prehistoric toad just released from a clay-bank and blinking in the sunlight. Not only has she taught me the joy of living, but through her ingenuity she brought about one of the greatest discoveries that has been made in years on ancient Egypt. ”

“ Aunt Daphne is just a dear. 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 Cassius' 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 fearfully, dear nestful of robins. ”

“ Amy, Norma, Peggy, and High Jinks had been the starters in all kinds of fun and recreation, while Anne had seemed to come the nearest to her of them all in actual comradeship. Then last of all, Marcelle. It was she who clasped Kit's hand, as she repeated in her low voice:
"While the grass grows and the waters run, so long shall we be friends."
"For pity's sakes, girls," exclaimed Miss Daphne, "don't act as if you were never going to see her again. I shall see that she comes back in vacation next year, because the Dean and I couldn't possibly do without her, now." ”

“ The flap of the tent lifted towards the roadway, and Mr. Ormond sent a hail across the twilight gloom.
"Is that you, Shad?"
"No, sir, it's just us girls," answered Kit. "We're going down to the mill."
"Would you mind so very much, Miss Kit, asking if any one has telephoned a telegram up for me from the station? I am expecting one."
"There, you see," Helen said, dubiously, as they went on down the road. "We just get rid of one mystery, and he hands us another one to solve. Who on earth would he be getting a telegram from?" ”

“ The houses made Kit think of those back at the Cove, with their spacious lawns and large restful homes of plenty. Mrs. Bellamy was filled with amusement when she heard the story of Kit's substitution of herself for the boy the Dean had asked for. She was a tall, slender woman with ashen gold hair and gray eyes, who seemed almost like an elder sister of Anne's. They occupied a suite of rooms near the campus.
"It is ever so much pleasanter than living in the heart of the city," she said, "and Rex has so many friends among the boys out here that it makes it pleasant for both of the children. ”

“ The girls on their side were fairly gloating over their own harvesting from the summer labors. Sally had made her own profit out of the little store, and the tent colony had yielded dividends sufficient to give each of the older girls a golden nest egg. Most of Jean's was going into her trousseau, but Kit took hers on the quiet and dropped it into her mother's lap as Mrs. Robbins sat reading in her favorite chair on the veranda.
"But, Kit, I don't need it now, dear," protested her mother. "Why don't you buy yourself some things that you've been wanting? I don't mean useful things. ”

“ If she had only married him, we would have had a 'Founder' in the family."
"Tony," said Kit, severely, "I am dealing with facts, not prospects, and you ought not to reveal any family secrets, either. I say it is a great honor to be a direct descendant of a 'Founder,' and we have one in our class. A girl, too modest to take advantage of her grandfather's record." She paused impressively, but with a quickening gleam in her eyes, as there suddenly have in view a hurrying figure in gray sweater and dark crimson cap on the campus walk. ”

“ I guess that must be why I like to stay around Greenacres so well. I never knew anything about the fun of being in a family before until you all took me in here. There ought to be a tablet on that old corn-crib, 'Sacred to the memory of the day I found a family.'"
"It's peace," Kit answered, firmly, giving him her hand. "Here, you can have my watch strap as security. That's the way we always do." ”

“ Ralph came up the veranda steps and seated himself on a pile of straw mats beside the willow chair.
"We've just decided," he announced, "and Jean says I may tell you all. It's going to happen in September, so she can go west with me. How do you like your new brother, Kit?"
"I approve," answered Kit, solemnly. "You know I've always liked you, Ralph, and I hereby bestow the hand of Jean upon you with all my blessings. Are you going to let her keep on painting?"
"She can do anything she likes," Ralph promised. ”