Mr. Delaplaine was likewise addicted to reverie and historic retrospect.  Nothing delighted Billie and Kit so much as to ride down to the store and get a chance to converse with both of the old men on local history and family “trees.”  Mr. Delaplaine’s mail, which consisted mostly of catalogues, came addressed to N.B.  Delaplaine, Esq., and even the little French Canadian kiddies tumbling around the gardens of the mill houses down in Nantic knew what that N.B. stood for, but to Gilead he was just “Bony” Delaplaine.

Every day that first week found the girls down at the Farm prying around the ruins for any lost treasures.  Stanley Howard struck up a friendship with both the Judge and Mr. Bobbins, and usually drove by on his way from the village.  He would stop and chat for a few moments with them, but Kit was elusive.  Vaguely, she felt that the proper thing for her to do was to offer an apology, for even considering him an unlawful trespasser.  When Stanley would drive away, Jean would laugh at her teasingly.

“Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud, sister mine?  He seems a very sightly young man, even if he does ‘chase caterpillars for a living.’  I never did see any one except you, Kit, who hated to acknowledge herself in the wrong.  The rest of us all have the most peaceful, forgiving sort of dispositions, but you can be a regular porcupine when you want to be.”

“It could come from Uncle Cassius,” retorted Kit.  “Did you hear them all talking about him over at Elmwood while we were there?  Let’s sit here under the pines a minute until the mailman goes by.  I’m awfully tired poking over cinders.  Cousin Roxy said he was the only notable in our family.  Dean Cassius Cato Peabody.  We ought to tell ‘Bony’ that.”

“Don’t you call him ‘Bony’ so he’ll hear you,” whispered Jean.  “It would hurt his feelings.”  She glanced back over her shoulder to where Mr. Delaplaine worked, taking off the outer layer of charred clapboards from the front of the house.

“Still it is nice to own a dean, almost as good as a squire,” repeated Kit, placidly.  “There were only seven original ones here in Gilead; and his grandfather was one of those.  Let’s see, Jean, he would have been our great-great-great-grandfather, wouldn’t he?  Great-Uncle Cassius is named for him, Cassius Cato Peabody.  Just think of him, Jean, with a name like that when he was a little boy, in a braided jacket and those funny high waisted breeches you see in the little painted woodcuts in Cousin Roxy’s childhood books.”

“I didn’t pay much attention to what they were saying about him,” said Jean, dreamily.  “Is he still alive?”

“He is, but I guess he might as well be dead as far as the rest of the family is concerned.  Cousin Roxy said he’d never married, and he lived with his old maiden lady sister out west somewhere.  Not the real west, either; I mean the interesting west like Saskatchewan and Saskatoon and—­and California; you know what I mean, Jean?”