“We’ve had our hollow tree, and I’m afraid unless we get right down to business now, we’ll have all the crusts of bread and liberty we fancy.  I just can’t stay here in this beautiful place with nothing to worry over, while the family are practically in a lifeboat with breakers ahead.”

If the Dean had known Kit better, he would have realized that in emotional moments she was prone to exaggerated similes, but as it was, he felt impressed.

“Why, God bless my heart and soul,” he exclaimed, “I had no idea it was as bad as this.  I thought Jerry was very comfortably fixed.”

“Oh, we were at the Cove.  We had everything we wanted, but father was sick an awfully long while after his breakdown, and he’s never been able to do any work since.”

“But how ridiculous for a man to bury himself and all his capital in a place like Gilead,” the Dean protested, somewhat testily.  “He could have done a great many other things, I should imagine.”

Kit leaned over and looked at him, right in the eye.

“Uncle Cassius, what would you do if everything was just swept away from you, health, money, home and your work; what do you suppose you would do?  If there was any spot of earth that was peaceful and restful, and that you loved best, wouldn’t you want to go to it?  That’s what Gilead means, ’the place of healing.’”

There was silence in the old study.  The Dean was looking straight at Annui as if for inspiration, and yet it was not the old image which he saw, but a vision of Gilead as he remembered it in his boyhood, a vision of green hills spanning the horizon, of fertile valleys and many watercourses.  Memories stirred in his mind of Jerry Robbins’ mother, his sister.  Sometimes Kit reminded him of her, in her buoyant self-reliance and optimism.

The bonds of relationship had always been somewhat intangible to him, since he had grown up.  He had laid out his own career himself, and had carried every ambition to completion and reality.  The last twenty years had been years of fruition, of honors freely given, years of fulfillment.  He had not been, like Judge Ellis, intolerant of other men’s failures; he had simply ignored them, never feeling any responsibility towards the weaker ones who fell in the race.  In his way, he prided himself upon a gentle, aloof philosophy of life which left him the boundaries of the old study as a horizon of happiness.

Probably not until that moment had he realized the gradual revolutionary process Kit had been putting him through ever since her arrival.  She had trained him into having an interest in other people and things, until now it was impossible for him not to see the picture of Greenacres as she did.

“How did you find out about this, my dear?” he asked.

“Well,” Kit replied, honestly, “partly from Billie and partly from this letter from Cousin Roxy.  You know Cousin Roxy, don’t you, Uncle Cassius?”