"The flower of genius?" suggested Kit, happily. "I don't think that's so
at all, Uncle Cassius, and I'll tell you why. You take it on the farm down
home. Dad says that our land in Gilead is no good because it's been worked
over and over, and it's all worn out, but if you plow deep and strike a
brand new subsoil you get wonderful crops. Just think what a lovely time
you'll have planting crops in my unplowed brain cells."

The first laugh she had ever heard came from the Dean's lips, although it
was more of a chuckle. His next question was apparently irrelevant.

"How do you think you're going to like Hope College?"

"All right," Kit responded, cheerfully. "I only hope it likes me. I've met
a few of the boys and girls through Rex and Aunt Daphne, and I like them
awfully well. You know, down home they're nice to you if they know who you
are, and all about your family. Cousin Roxy says it's better to have a
private burial lot well filled with ancestors than your name in the Social
Register. But out west here it seems as if they either like you or not.
Just when they first meet you, you're taken right into the fold on the
strength of what you are yourself. Rex said an awfully funny thing the
other day when Barty Browning declared that he had two Indian chiefs in
his family, and Rex asked me if we had a little 'tommyhawk' in our
family."

The door opened with a little, light, deprecating tap first from Miss
Daphne's finger-tips. She glanced around the side of it cautiously to be
sure she was not disturbing the Dean, and smiled whimsically when she saw
the two. The Dean's pipe had gone out, and he was leaning over the desk
listening as eagerly as though he had been a boy himself, while Kit, with
her hands clasped behind her head, chatted. Usually people conversed with
the Dean, they never chatted, and Miss Daphne realized that Kit had
already passed the outposts of the Dean's defenses.

CHAPTER XI

"KEEP OUT"

Hope College was founded in 1871. This date was graven on the corner
stone, which the Dean had been careful to show Kit, telling her at the
same time how the first settlers through the middle Northwest followed the
customs of the Puritans and Cavaliers.

"A church, a schoolhouse for every clearing, and a college before the
county court-house."

It seemed queer to Kit to think of Hope College as being any kind of an
historic pile, but Rex had assured her anything that dated before Custer
was ancient hist