everything was so different from the connecticut verdure and underbrush. instead of the thick, lush growth which came from richly watered black loam, here one found sand cherries and little dwarf willows and beeches springing up from the sand. tall sword grass waved almost like cousin roxy's striped ribbon grass in the home garden, and wild sunflowers showed like golden glow here and there.
the beach was level and rockless, different entirely from the eastern atlantic shores, but the sand was beautifully white and fine, and there were great weather-beaten, wave-washed boulders lying half buried in the sand, also trunks of trees, their roots uprearing grotesquely like strange heads of animals. kit thought whimsically how the dean might have added them with profit to his prehistoric collection. there was no glimpse or hint of the town to be seen down here. not even a boat house, only one long pier. about a mile and a half from shore was a lightship, and farther out a white steamer showed in perfect outline against the blueness of the morning sky.
kit followed sandy's lead, hardly realizing the distance she was covering, until he suddenly disappeared behind a nosing headland. when she rounded it, she saw a cottage built close under the shelter of the bluff. the sand drifted like snow half-way up to its windows. it had been painted red once, but now its old clapboards were the color of sorrel, and weather-beaten and wave-washed like the boulders. there were fish nets drying on tall staples driven in behind a couple of overturned rowboats, and at that first glimpse it seemed to her as if there were children everywhere. four stalwart boys from fourteen to eighteen worked over the nets, mending them; around the back door there were four or five more, and sitting in the sunlight in a low rocking-chair was an old woman as picturesque as some ancient sibyl.
sandy seemed to greet them as old acquaintances, so kit called good-morning in good old yankee fashion. the boys eyed her, somewhat askance, and all of the children scurried like a flock of startled chickens as she came up the boardwalk to the kitchen door, but the old grandmother kept serenely on paring potatoes, calm-eyed and unembarrassed.
"how do you do?" said kit, smilingly. "i'm dean peabody's grandniece. i just came west yesterday, and sandy brought me here this morning. i didn't know where he was going, but he seemed to know the way."
the old woman's brown eyes followed the movement of the dog.
"he ver' fine, that dog," she said, deliberately. "he come ver' often. i know him since he is un petit chien, ver' small pup—so beeg." she measured with her hand from the ground.
"do you know the dean?" kit asked, sitting down on the doorstep beside her. "he lives up in the big house on the bluff, where the pine and maples are."
the old woman shook her head placidly.
"i not go up that bluff in forty-eight year."
kit's eyes widened with quick interest. just then a girl a little older than herself came out of the kitchen door. two long braids of straight brown hair hung over her shoulders, and her dress was slouchy and gypsy-like. she looked at kit with quiet, steady scrutiny, and then questioningly over at the boys. but kit herself relieved the tension.
"hello," she said. "i think you've got an awfully nice place down here. i like it because it looks old like our houses back home. all the other places i've seen since i came west have looked so newly painted."
"this isn't new," the girl told her slowly. "this place belonged to my grandfather's father, louis beaubien. there were indians around here then. most of them 'jibways."
jean used to say that the instant kit's curiosity was aroused, she was just exactly like a squirrel after nuts, and here was an entirely new field of romance and adventure to be uncovered. she fairly sniffed the air. the wonderful old grandmother, basking in the sun with memories of the past like a mother time. the strong, tanned boys working at the nets, the flock of dark-skinned youngsters, and the girl, marcelle, whom she was to know so well before her stay in delphi was over.
she hurried back, eager to ask questions about the beaubiens, and found herself late for breakfast the very first morning she was there. the dean's face was a study as she entered, and miss daphne's fingers fluttered somewhat nervously over the coffee urn, and fragile cups. kit was out of breath, and so full of excitement that she did not even notice the air was chill.
"i've had a perfectly wonderful time," she began. "no coffee, aunt daphne, please. mother doesn't allow me to have any. it's all sandy's fault. i just wanted to run down the bluff to the shore, and he led me way round that headland to the funniest old house, half-sunken in the sand, and i got acquainted with the old grandmother and marcelle. the boys and the little youngsters seemed half-scared to death at the sight of me, and so i didn't bother to get acquainted with them yet."
the dean looked up at her over his glasses with a quizzical expression, and miss daphne fairly caught her breath.
"the beaubiens on the shore, my dear?" she asked. "those half-breed french canadians?"
"well, i didn't know just what they were," answered kit, cheerfully, "but i think they're awfully interesting. don't you think that they look like the breton fisher people in some of the old french paintings? that girl looked just exactly like the youngest one crossing the sands at low tide at st. malo. we have the painting at home, and i love it. and there was another girl about thirteen that i saw staring at me from the kitchen, and she looked just like 'the song of the lark' girl where she's crossing the fields at dawn."
"the beaubiens have not a very good reputation, my dear," the dean coughed slightly behind his hand as he spoke. "the present generation may be law-abiding, but even within my memory, the beaubiens had a little habit of smuggling."
"smuggling?" repeated kit, interestedly. "how could they smuggle way off here?"
"very easily. there were schooners that used to make the run down from the canadian shore around the straits carrying contraband goods in war time. besides, there is the indian strain in them, and they are squatters. there have been several lawsuits against them, and they have persisted in staying there on the shore when the property owners on the bluff distinctly purchased riparian rights."
"but, brother, the beaubiens won all their suits, didn't they?" asked miss daphne, pleasantly. "i'm sure the older boys are very industrious, and i think the girl marcelle is strikingly attractive. you're not really forbidding kit to go down there, i'm sure."
the dean said something that was lost in a murmur, for he had been one of the property owners vanquished in the lawsuits by the beaubiens. after breakfast kit went up-stairs with miss daphne into her own little sitting-room. this looked towards the street, out over the maple and pine-shaded lawn. also, you could command a very fair view of the college. this was built of gray stone like a norman castle, with square towers, and was overgrown with woodbine just beginning to show a tinge of crimson.
"it seems awfully queer, aunt daphne," kit said as she leaned out of the window, "to think that i am going there into the 'prep' class. rex said on the way up here——"
she leaned suddenly farther out and waved.
"hello, rex, are you coming over?"
rex glanced up at the radiant face as he came along the hedge-bordered drive between his home and the dean's and waved back in neighborly fashion.
"i'm going up to the campus now," he said. "ask miss daphne if she'd let you be in the library club. there's a meeting this morning."
"could i, aunt daphne? please say yes. i haven't joined anything in ages," kit begged. "i don't care whether it's a library club or an indian powwow. i am just dying to be in something out here, where i'll meet every one and get acquainted. if you don't need me this morning——" she hesitated, but some of her enthusiasm had caught miss daphne, and she immediately succumbed to the whim of the moment.
"why, i think, my dear, that i'll go with you. the dean has taken up so much of my time that i've rather lost my interest and activity in affairs. you go down with rex, and i'll join you presently."
the dean's desk stood in a wide square bay window which overlooked the driveway. he had settled down to his morning's portion of labor and was blocking out a curriculum of study for kit, when he happened to glance up, and beheld the trio passing happily out through the gates. certainly they did not realize, nor did he at that moment, that already the leaven of youth was at work in the old shadowy house behind the sentinel pines.
