He hardly glanced up now as she came in, but smiled and nodded when he saw who it was, keeping on with his writing.

“Just hand me that volume on the second shelf to your right by the door.  Second volume, ‘Explorations in Upper Egypt.’  Look up Seti I in the index.”

Kit found the place and laid it before him, perching herself on one end of the desk, as she always did when she wanted to attract his attention.  The little statuette of Annui smiled grotesquely down upon her from its pedestal.  The urn stood in a handy place of honor upon the desk itself as the Dean had been deciphering the inscriptions upon it.

“I hate to disturb you, Uncle Cassius,” Kit began, with the directness so characteristic of her, “but I really think I ought to go back home.  You’ve been wonderful to give me such a long visit, and I’ve enjoyed the school work immensely, but somehow I begin to feel like a soldier who has been away on a furlough.  It’s time for me to get back to the firing line, because mother needs me.”

The Dean glanced up in surprise, and came slowly out of his dream of concentration as the meaning of her words dawned upon him.

“Why, my dear child,” he exclaimed, “this is very sudden.  There has never been any question about your going back, at least——­” He coughed deprecatingly.  “Not since we became acquainted with you.  Has anything happened?”

“Why, nothing special—­I mean, nothing tragic.  It’s only this, Dad’s lost a lot of money all at once.  He did have a little income, enough so we never have had to depend on the farm entirely, but now, even that has been swept away.  I suppose it will come back some time after the war, but as I understand it, the stock he had has stopped paying dividends.”

“Jerry never had any head for business.”  The Dean tapped one hand lightly with his tortoise-shell rimmed spectacles in an absent-minded musing way that nearly drove Kit frantic.  “But what can you do about it, my dear?  Surely by returning at such a time you merely add to your father’s burdens.”

“No, I won’t,” Kit answered, decidedly, “because I’ve got a plan that I’ve been thinking about for ever and ever so long.  I’m going to try and persuade Dad to let us put in hogs.”

“Hogs,” repeated the Dean, in a baffled tone.  “Hogs, my dear.  Who ever heard of raising hogs when they could raise anything else at all?  I’m sure that Horace never tried hogs on his farm.”

Now it just happened that Kit had a smattering knowledge of Horace, gleaned from Billie.  In the old days back home, when they had studied together, they had seemed to always get the personal side of the old heroes and people of fame.  And just now the only thing she could remember about Horace popped up in her mind.

“Well, I’ll bet a cookie there was many a time when he wished he had.  Don’t you remember how he wrote,

    “’Give me again my hollow tree,
      A crust of bread and liberty.’