“Oh, come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,
     Oh, come ye, oh, come ye to Bethlehem,
       Come and behold Him, born the King of Angels,
     Oh, come let us adore Him,
     Oh, come let us adore Him,
     Oh, come let us adore Him,
       Christ the Lord.”

The Dean knelt in prayer beside the Christmas tree.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE TENTS OF GREENACRES

If it had not been for the opening of Hope College the week after New Years, Miss Daphne declared, for her part, she would not have gone back to Delphi until she had at least seen the arbutus bloom again in April.  After Christmas at Greenacres, Cousin Roxy insisted on both her and the Dean visiting at Elmhurst, but before they left, the Dean had unfolded his plan.

“Daphne is well provided for in case of my passing over,” he said, genially and unexpectedly, the last evening he was with them, “and I have been thinking a good deal lately over what Kit has well named the folly of ‘dead men’s shoes.’” He turned to where Mr. Robbins sat on the opposite side of the round library table, nearest the fire.  “So I’ve taken the liberty, Jerry, of making over to you now what you would have had inevitably some day.  Don’t say anything, please.  It’s a personal indulgence on my part.  I want to see, while I am alive, just exactly how much happiness it will bring you and yours.  It is all well invested, but you may do as you like with it.  I would suggest that you would live on the income, and stop worrying.”

And when both Mr. Robbins and the Mother Bird tried to expostulate, the Dean only laughed at them, brushing their arguments aside.

“Why, if I were to turn over everything I own to the clan of Robbins, I could hardly pay back all that Kit has done for me.  I’m a new man, Jerry.  Sometimes I feel like a prehistoric toad just released from a clay-bank and blinking in the sunlight.  Not only has she taught me the joy of living, but through her ingenuity she brought about one of the greatest discoveries that has been made in years on ancient Egypt.  I feel guilty in taking any credit for it whatsoever, for while I was groping blindly after the solution, she put her finger, as it were, on the whole source of the trouble.”

After they had returned west, and Jean had gone back to New York, Kit found her opportunity of laying her summer plan before her mother and father.

“There are acres and acres here that we never use at all.  All that wonderful land on both sides of the river up through the valley, and the two islands besides.  What I thought we could do was this, if you could just let us girls manage it.  Couldn’t we start a regular tent colony?  Jean was telling me before she left about an artists’ colony up in the Catskills, where they have tents fitted up for light housekeeping, and I’m sure we could do it here.”