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