Kit read this last over twice, but could not agree with it at all.  She had always liked the pioneer outlook, the longing to break new trails, the starting of little colonies in clearings of one’s own making.  If there was an ivy around her castle, she wanted the joy of planting it herself, and seeing it grow from her own efforts.

Jean had always told her that this came from the distaff side of the family.  There had been a Virginian ancestor long ago, who had broken away from the conventional life on the big river estate, near Roanoke, and had gone faring forth into the wilderness.  This was Kit’s favorite ancestor, John Carisbrook.  He had wandered far through the west, and had married a girl in one of the outlying settlements along the Ohio River, a girl with French blood in her, Gabrielle de la Chapelle.  Kit always liked to believe that it was from these two she had received her love of adventure, and of trail blazing.

She had never felt an affinity with “haunts of ancient peace” like Jean and Helen.  Only that week she had been reading in one of the Dean’s early English histories of real rooftrees.  How, in the earliest times, primitive people built their houses around some selected giant oak or other king of the forest, with the massive trunk itself upholding the structure.  If she could have done so, Kit would have gladly selected for herself her own special tree in the forest primeval, rather than have fallen heir to any ancestral castle such as Helen hankered for.

So, the little town perched high on the bluff above the lake had appealed to her mightily.  Although from a western standpoint it was quite old, dating at least five years before the outbreak of the Civil War, from the colonial standpoint it was a mere youngster.

“Historic tradition?” repeated Kit.  “When all around here are the old Indian trails, and the footprints left by the French explorers.  I just wish I could get Billie out here for a little while.  He’ll settle down in some old school that thinks it is wonderful because John Smith built a camp-fire on its site once upon a time, or Pocahontas planted corn in its back field.”

Kit sighed, tucked her mother’s and father’s letters in her sweater pocket and started off for her favorite lookout point on the bluff.  Here, with Sandy crouching at her feet, she read the three letters from the girls.  Jean’s was full of plans for her coming trip to New York, She was not going to Boston this year, but Aunt Beth had promised her three months at the Art school, and she was to take pupils besides, to help out expenses.

“You know, if the war had ended as we planned, I could have gone to Italy with Carlota and the Countess, but the villa is still used as a hospital, and though I am dying to go, Dad and mother won’t hear of it.  Don’t I wish I were twenty so I could do some Red Cross work and get over?  It seems so perfectly futile dabbling away at one’s own little petty ambitions, with humanity needing one so.”