the wedding was set for the twentieth of september, and the last of the tent colony departed two weeks previously. the boys had gone first of all, and then the art students. the night before they left there had been a moonlight lawn party up at greenacres, with dancing in a pavilion of young willows built by the boys. kit declared she had never imagined anything so easy and so striking. with a good floor laid for dancing, they had erected a framework and then tied the willow trees to this on the four sides of the pavilion. crisscrossing overhead were rows of japanese lanterns. old cady graves paced up and down playing his violin, as usual, and calling off for the quadrille, in his high pitched rhythmic cadence.
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.
"do you suppose he'd be willing to play 'home, sweet home' on that thing if we asked him to? 'tain't nothin' but a big fiddle, is it?"
before kit could answer, madame ormond herself stood facing them on the veranda steps under the big yellow porch light, and instead of any grand-opera aria, her golden voice floated out for them, singing cynthy's favorite as surely it had never been sung before in gilead.
after it was all over and the girls were in their own rooms, kit stepped to helen's door for an extra match, and found her standing before the mirror, a long green velvet portière draped around her shoulders, and a strip of gold braid banding her hair. she turned around with quick embarrassment, and exclaimed breathlessly:
"oh, kit, please don't tell. i was just trying to look like isolde. madame ormond has a photograph of herself dressed like this, and i was wondering if i ever would sing it."
kit wrapped her arms around her as she stood behind her, almost as if she would have protected her from any dizzy flights of fancy.
"you look more like brunehilda the golden-haired," she said. "there's one thing about us robbinses, nobody can say that we lack courage in our ambitions."
"oh, but kit, madame ormond says that she is sure my voice will develop into something worth while."
"well, let's hope so, anyhow," 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? something that you've thought and thought about for months and months until it became like a light ahead of you?"
kit sat down on the edge of the bed and thought a minute. life had never presented itself to her in vistas. 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.
"i guess i'm a kind of a gypsy, helenita," she sighed regretfully, "'cause there isn't anything i really want to do so much as travel and hit new trails. i don't just want to start out like jean is doing and rush over three thousand just to settle down at the other end for ever and ever. i'd want to keep on going. it's such a comfort to know that the world is round after all, and you can't topple off the end."
helen regarded her doubtfully.
"you know, i heard stanley talking almost exactly like that. he said that after his work was finished in france he would just want to travel on and on into all the beautiful, lonesome places of the world, where there had never been any war."
kit stared at her in startled amazement.
"in france?" she repeated. "billie never said a word about it."
"i heard him telling father he was leaving this fall with one of the engineering units from virginia on reconstruction work in the forests. why, kit?"
"nothing," answered kit, shortly. "take off that golden crown and get to bed. it's after midnight. you'll probably dream of being a grand-opera queen, and wake up in the morning hearing doris calling the guinea hens."
two days later the ormonds left. the little camp over on the island had broken up the day before. billie had gone up to his grandfather's to spend a few days before returning to school, but stanley remained over at greenacres as mr. robbins' guest.
with a steady income assured him by the dean's gift, mr. robbins was planning to develop the farm along the intensive lines he had always longed for. 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. i mean 'white hyacinths' to feed the soul."
kit sat down on the top step, hugging her knees and rocking to and fro contentedly.
"you know i can't think of a single 'white hyacinth' that i'm hungering for," she said. "i suppose i've got to go back to high school next week, and i don't want to very much at all. i can't bear general educations, mother darling. i wish there was a school i could go into and only study what i love best. mountain climbing, island hunting and forestry. i want to be an explorer."
"there is such a school," her mother smiled down at her, "presided over by old dean experience, and you go to it all your life."
"but i mean something tangible," kit explained. "it seems such a terrible waste of time just going to high school, and just filling up on a lot of things you're not particularly interested in." mrs. 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 looked off at the tree-tops that showed as a patch of green in the river where the island lay, with a deep perplexity in her eyes. up-stairs there came the steady whirr of a sewing machine, where little miss dusenberry, the village dressmaker, was already deep in the mysteries of jean's trousseau. in the living-room, helen was practicing her vocal lesson, trying to follow the rules mr. ormond had given her, and doris was completely hidden in the big, brown camp hammock under the maples reading a favorite book. it seemed as though all the members of the family but herself were following their natural bent, and she couldn't even see a natural bent ahead of her, nothing but a long winding trail that called.
she gave a quick sigh, and put her head down on her mother's knee, almost as doris might have done.
"i'll go through with it, motherie," she said, "high school and anything else you say, if only some day i can just drop everything and blaze my own paths."
"remember, you don't blaze them for yourself, but for those who follow after." mrs. robbins put her arms down around the young shoulders that already longed to carry burdens. "stanley was telling us last night of the death of general maude at bagdad. to me he is one of the great heroes of the war, and the word he left to his soldiers seems like a battle cry of inspiration to the race. 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. he set them down beside her with the old whimsical laugh in his eyes.
"if you'll be a real good girl, kit, and never call me a berry hooker again, you can have first pick of these shepherd sweetings."
he was only joking, but there was no answering glint of humor in kit's eyes. very seriously, she stretched out her hand to him.
"i'll never, never even think of you as a berry hooker again, stanley," she promised. "i didn't know you were going away off over there until billie told me, and i'm willing now to say i am sorry for that first day, and shad locking you up, and mr. hicks coming to arrest you."
"i do believe you're trying to forgive me, kit," stanley said, teasingly. "is this a truce, or a lasting peace? you see, i want to know for sure, because i haven't any sisters, or mother, or any one who cares a rap whether i go or stay, and you're the first person who's even mentioned it. 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."
she slipped the little silver watch out, and handed him the strap.
"if it won't fit your wrist, just carry it. i'd like to think something of mine was really over there, and i've always loved that. jean cut it out of leather for me, and made it; even the little copper slides she hammered out herself."
stanley was very busy detaching the charm he wore on his fob. it was a little amulet-shaped oblong of dull silver with a tree on it in relief.
"like playing forfeits, isn't it?" he said, rather boyishly. "this is all i've got. it's an indian charm i had given me down in new mexico, but the tree is alive and growing. it isn't a sunken snag."
kit held it up in delight. it was exactly to her liking, and she said laughingly the little, childish formula of party days:
"heavy, heavy hangs over your head,
what shall the owner do to redeem it?"
"are you going to eat all those apples, kit?" asked doris, her curly rumpled hair showing over the top of the hammock, and kit tucked away her service charm against the day of its redemption.
