Having set in motion the coming guest, he believed firmly that an unfaltering Fate would direct his footsteps safely to Delphi.  Cassius Cato Peabody had been peculiar all his life.  He had been a peculiar boy, unsettled, studious, impractical.  Miss Daphne was his younger sister, and ever since her girlhood had tried to give him all the love and encouragement that others refused.  She had trotted after him faithfully and happily on all of his exploring expeditions.  Perhaps one reason why these had been so successful was because somehow she had always managed to surround him with home comforts, even in the wilds of the upper Nile.  The Dean had had his regular meals and clean changes of clothing in the shadow of Nineveh’s ruins in far Chaldea, just as though he had been in his own domicile.

And perhaps the quaintest thing about it all was that Miss Daphne herself, no matter on what particular point of the globe she had happened to pitch her tent, had always retained her courage, although she had faced dangers that the average woman would have fled from.  Perhaps she carried in her heart an unfailing faith that Providence could not deny her protection when she was enabling the Dean to give the benefit of his great gifts to the world.

Their house stood on the same hill as Hope College, the highest point in the rising ridge of bluffs along the Lake Shore at Delphi.  It was built of dark red brick, a square double edifice, with long French windows and two rotunda shaped wings, somewhat in the French style.  A grove of pine trees almost hid it from view on its street side, the stately Norway pines that Kit always loved.  The back of the house looked directly out over the lake, and the land here was frankly left to nature.  Trees, grass and underbrush rioted at will, until they suddenly ended on the brow of the bluff, where there was a sheer declivity of sand to the beach.  Looking at it from below, Kit afterwards thought it was like a miniature section of the Yosemite, the sand had hardened into such fantastic shapes, and the strata in places was so plainly visible.

Mrs. Robbins’ telegram arrived the night before Kit herself.  It was brief and non-committal.

“Kit arrives Union Station, Chicago, Thursday, 10:22 A.M.”

“Kit,” repeated the Dean.  “Humph!  Nickname.  Superfluous and derogatory.”

Miss Daphne took the telegram from his desk with a little smile that was almost tremulous with excitement.

“It’s probably the diminutive for Christopher, brother,” she said.  “I think it’s a nice name.  I always liked the legend of St. Christopher.  Somebody’ll have to meet him down in Chicago.  He might lose his head and take the wrong train.”

“He’s about fourteen, isn’t he?  Old enough to change from one train to another, and use his tongue if he’s in doubt.  When I was fourteen, Daphne, I was earning my own living working on a farm, summers, and going to a school in the winter time where we all had to work for our board.  Never hurt us a bit.  The greatest trait of character you can inculcate in a child is self-reliance.”