And perhaps secretly Kit had always considered personal ambition a little private form of selfishness.  As she ransacked her mind now, trying to find her own ambition and get it safely on a pin for examination like one of Billie’s specimens, only her old-time love of forestry answered her.

“I guess I’m a kind of a gypsy, Helenita,” she sighed regretfully, “’cause there isn’t anything I really want to do so much as travel and hit new trails.  I don’t just want to start out like Jean is doing and rush over three thousand just to settle down at the other end for ever and ever.  I’d want to keep on going.  It’s such a comfort to know that the world is round after all, and you can’t topple off the end.”

Helen regarded her doubtfully.

“You know, I heard Stanley talking almost exactly like that.  He said that after his work was finished in France he would just want to travel on and on into all the beautiful, lonesome places of the world, where there had never been any war.”

Kit stared at her in startled amazement.

“In France?” she repeated.  “Billie never said a word about it.”

“I heard him telling father he was leaving this fall with one of the engineering units from Virginia on reconstruction work in the forests.  Why, Kit?”

“Nothing,” answered Kit, shortly.  “Take off that golden crown and get to bed.  It’s after midnight.  You’ll probably dream of being a grand-opera queen, and wake up in the morning hearing Doris calling the guinea hens.”

Two days later the Ormonds left.  The little camp over on the island had broken up the day before.  Billie had gone up to his grandfather’s to spend a few days before returning to school, but Stanley remained over at Greenacres as Mr. Robbins’ guest.

With a steady income assured him by the Dean’s gift, Mr. Robbins was planning to develop the farm along the intensive lines he had always longed for.  The girls on their side were fairly gloating over their own harvesting from the summer labors.  Sally had made her own profit out of the little store, and the tent colony had yielded dividends sufficient to give each of the older girls a golden nest egg.  Most of Jean’s was going into her trousseau, but Kit took hers on the quiet and dropped it into her mother’s lap as Mrs. Robbins sat reading in her favorite chair on the veranda.

“But, Kit, I don’t need it now, dear,” protested her mother.  “Why don’t you buy yourself some things that you’ve been wanting?  I don’t mean useful things.  I mean ‘white hyacinths’ to feed the soul.”

Kit sat down on the top step, hugging her knees and rocking to and fro contentedly.

“You know I can’t think of a single ‘white hyacinth’ that I’m hungering for,” she said.  “I suppose I’ve got to go back to high school next week, and I don’t want to very much at all.  I can’t bear general educations, mother darling.  I wish there was a school I could go into and only study what I love best.  Mountain climbing, island hunting and forestry.  I want to be an explorer.”