“Yes, and you’re just as likely as not to be homesick to-morrow,” laughed Anne.  “Go on about your poet.”

“Oh, nothing, except that he didn’t believe there should be more than one room in a house, and he built little individual houses all over ’The Heights’ out in California.  I’d love to do that back home, with a dining-room on one green hill, and the kitchen down in the, valley.”

“You’d need a mountain railway on an up grade, when it came meal time.”

“Well maybe,” Kit assented, “but at least I’d have my own bower in a pine grove, and each of the royal princesses could go and do likewise.  But that isn’t what I came over for.  You know Marcelle Beaubien?  The girls don’t like her going to Hope.”

“Don’t they?” Anne asked, mildly.  “Well, what are they going to do about it?  I thought that’s what colleges were for.  Who’s against her?”

“I don’t think it’s exactly anything definite or violent, but you know how mighty uncomfortable they can make her.  There’s Amy Roberts and Norma and Peggy Porter and the Tony Conyers crowd.”

“She won’t miss anything special, even if they do try to snub her,” answered Anne laughingly.

“This is my second year at Hope, and I want to tell you right now that Charity rules in the Douglas Dormitory.  If you can get her on Marcelle’s side, the other girls will trot along like little lambkins.”

“Do you suppose,” Kit leaned forward impressively, as she sprang her plan, “do you suppose Charity would loan her room for a Founders’ Tea?”

“A Founders’ Tea,” repeated Anne.  “What’s that?”

Kit proclaimed grandiloquently: 

“A tea in honor of Malcolm Douglas, pioneer founder of Hope College, and grandfather of Marcelle Beaubien.”

Anne’s blue eyes widened in amazement, and her hair-brush was suspended in mid-air.

“How did you find out?” she whispered.  “Does Marcelle know?”

“Of course she knows.  She told me all about it herself, but I don’t think she’s got sense enough to realize what a nice handy little club of defense it gives her against the girls to spring it on them at the tea, and you’ve got to help me get it up.  We’ll coax Charity into loaning us her room first, and I’ll look up all about Malcolm Douglas, and write a cute little essay about the historic founding of Hope.  Then we’ll send out mysterious little invitations, and just say on them, ’To meet a Founder’s granddaughter.’”

“When?” asked Anne, reflectively.  “You ought to do it soon, so if it works they’ll take her into the different clubs right away.  I think you ought to try and see Charity to-day after classes and get her advice.  Another thing, Kit, do you suppose Marcelle would have any relics around of her grandfather that we could kind of spring on them unexpectedly?”

Kit’s eyes kindled with appreciation.

“That’s a worthy thought.  Sort of corroborative evidence, as it were.  Anne, you’re a wonder.”  She sprang up from the couch, her hands deep in her white sweater pockets, looking very fit and purposeful.  “I think it’s up to me to go and prepare Charity.  You make out a list of things that we’ll want for the tea.  You’d better be the refreshment chairman, and we’ll try and make it a week from next Saturday.”