if she wants to come back home before summer,
mother dear. Money isn't everything."

"Oh, but Jean," sighed the Mother Bird, "it means so much in life. It's
foolish to blind ourselves to all that it will do for us. I never try to
deceive myself one bit, and I shall always miss the little luxuries and
greater comforts of life that we had back at the Cove, before your
father's health broke down, especially now that you girls are growing up
so soon into womanhood. It isn't for myself I want it, but for you."

Jean laughed as she slipped her arms closer around her mother's neck.

"But you mustn't apprentice Kit to the Sign of the Dollar, just for the
forlorn hope that Uncle Cassius and Aunt Daphne may send her home with a
shower of gold. It seems to me if they were really and truly the right
kind of family people, and cared for you and father, that they couldn't
rest until they had handed over a splendid, generous slice of their money
right now when it would do the most good."

"Oh, Jean, people never do that. But I do think they will leave something
to you all."

"Leave something!" sniffed Jean, scornfully. "If there's anything in the
world I thoroughly despise, it's old, mouldy, dead men's shoes. If I were
you, I'd write and tell Kit that she could come home at the Christmas
vacation if she wanted to."

But Cousin Roxy took an entirely different view of the matter when she was
consulted.

"Fiddlesticks," she said. "No girl of Kit's age knows what she wants two
minutes of the time. She's doing good missionary work out there, and she
must not become weary in well doing or draw back her hand from the plow.
You don't need her here at all, Elizabeth. Helen's getting plenty old
enough to take hold and help."

"Oh, but she's so young, Roxy, to have responsibility thrust upon her."

"Can't have it too young," retorted Mrs. Ellis, buoyantly. "It's what
tones up the muscles of the spirit. From what I know about Cassius Cato
Peabody, I should say that what he needed most was a trumpet call from the
Lord to make him take an interest in the land of the living instead of
mummies and buried cities."

So two letters went back to Kit, and in hers the Mother Bird could not
resist slipping a hint that perhaps it would be a wise thing to ask the
Dean about terminating her visit at Christmas time. But Jean added in
hers:

"Mother's afraid you are homesick, or that they may be tired of you by
this time, but if I were in your plac