“That’s all right,” Kit answered, comfortably.  “I don’t mind one bit.  I’ll do anything you tell me to, Uncle Cassius, because,” this very earnestly, “I do feel as if I hadn’t played quite fair.  I mean in coming out here, and landing on you suddenly, without warning you I was a girl, and I want to make up to you for it in every possible way.  I’ll study bones and ruins and rocks, and anything you tell me to, but I want to make sure first that you really like me.  Just as I am, I mean, before you know for certain whether all this is going to ‘take.’”

The Dean glanced up in a startled manner and looked at the face framed by the window quite as if he had never really given it an interested scrutiny before.  Not being inclined to sentiment by nature, he had regarded Kit so far solely from the experimental standpoint.  Since she had turned out to be a girl, he had decided to make the best of it, and at least try the effect of the course of instruction upon her.  The personal equation had never entered into his calculation, and yet here was Kit forcing it upon him, quite as plainly as though she had said: 

“Do you like me or don’t you?  If you don’t I think I had better go back home.”

“Well, bless my heart,” he said, rubbing his head.  “I thought that we had settled all that.  Of course, my dear, the reason I preferred a boy was because, well”—­the Dean floundered,—­“because scientists hold a consensus of opinion that through—­hem—­through centuries of cultivation, I may say, collegiate development,—­the male brain offers a better soil, as it were, for the—­er—­er——­”

“The flower of genius?” suggested Kit, happily.  “I don’t think that’s so at all, Uncle Cassius, and I’ll tell you why.  You take it on the farm down home.  Dad says that our land in Gilead is no good because it’s been worked over and over, and it’s all worn out, but if you plow deep and strike a brand new subsoil you get wonderful crops.  Just think what a lovely time you’ll have planting crops in my unplowed brain cells.”

The first laugh she had ever heard came from the Dean’s lips, although it was more of a chuckle.  His next question was apparently irrelevant.

“How do you think you’re going to like Hope College?”

“All right,” Kit responded, cheerfully.  “I only hope it likes me.  I’ve met a few of the boys and girls through Rex and Aunt Daphne, and I like them awfully well.  You know, down home they’re nice to you if they know who you are, and all about your family.  Cousin Roxy says it’s better to have a private burial lot well filled with ancestors than your name in the Social Register.  But out west here it seems as if they either like you or not.  Just when they first meet you, you’re taken right into the fold on the strength of what you are yourself.  Rex said an awfully funny thing the other day when Barty Browning declared that he had two Indian chiefs in his family, and Rex asked me if we had a little ‘tommyhawk’ in our family.”