“We got our test exams last week, and Stanley had to run out to Minnesota for the government, so he took me along to help him.”

“Billie, are you really after bugs and things—­I mean, are you going to really be a naturalist?”

“I guess you’d kind of call it being a business naturalist,” laughed Billie.  “I don’t think I’ll ever live in a shack on a mountainside, and write beautiful things about them, now that I know Stanley.  You want to roll up your sleeves and go to work like he does.”

“Is he here, now?” asked Kit, eagerly.

“Yep.”  Billie nodded oat of the window, towards Kemp Hall, the boys’ dormitory.  “After we found out that you didn’t live here, we were going on down to the Dean’s to find you, but he looked over the boys’ freshman class, and found he had a cousin or nephew or somebody on the list, Clayton Diggs.”

“I know him,” Kit exclaimed.  “He’s High Jinks’ cousin.  Regular bean pole, with freckles, but mighty nice.  I’ve got to be back for lunch, and you’re coming down with me, of course.  How long can you stay?”

“Just this afternoon.  We’re going back on the five forty-five, and catch the night express east.  If you wait here, I’ll chase after Stanley, ’cause he’ll want to have lunch with the Diggs boy, and he can join us later.”

Kit walked along the macadamized path which crossed the campus.  It was bordered by dwarf evergreen, but the students had named it Hope’s primrose path, owing to the temptation to dally along it, whenever one had the chance.

The coming of Billie unexpectedly, just at a time when she was feeling her first homesickness, struck Kit as being a special little gift handed out to her by Providence.  But with only five hours to visit with him, she knew it would be all the harder after he had gone.  He joined her on a run as she reached the sidewalk, and they hurried down to the Dean’s just in time for luncheon.  Kit’s face was fairly radiant as she presented her old-time chum of the hills to Miss Daphne and the Dean.

“Don’t you remember, Uncle Cassius,” she asked eagerly, “how, when I first came, I told you all about the boy back home who would have just suited you?  Well, that was Billie.”

The Dean’s gray eyes wrinkled as he surveyed Billie over the tops of his eye-glasses.

“You come highly recommended, young man,” he said.  “Kit almost persuaded me that if she didn’t suit I might be able to coax you away from your grandfather.”

“I’ll bet you wouldn’t change now,” Billie responded, gallantly.  “Kit knows a hundred per cent, more than I do, sir.  I used to hate history until she took to telling me stories about it, and making it interesting.  All I really care about is natural history, especially insects and birds.”

“Well, you could have a lovely time studying over uncle’s Egyptian scarabs,” said Kit, placidly.  “Weren’t you telling me something about a place in China where they had a whole grove filled with sacred silkworms, Aunt Daphne?”