“There is such a school,” her mother smiled down at her, “presided over by old dean experience, and you go to it all your life.”

“But I mean something tangible,” Kit explained.  “It seems such a terrible waste of time just going to high school, and just filling up on a lot of things you’re not particularly interested in.”  Mrs. Robbins looked down at the eager, troubled face, and there was a note of understanding sympathy in her voice, as she said: 

“You’re my only restless spirit, Kit, always reaching out after the mighty, real things of life, where Jean and Helen follow hopes and dreams.  Realities are very hard to face sometimes even when we find them.”

“Yes, I know,” Kit said, shortly.  “Stanley’s going to France, and I haven’t even found out yet how to thank him properly for fishing me out of the river and saving my life.  I wish Billie had done it.”

She looked off at the tree-tops that showed as a patch of green in the river where the island lay, with a deep perplexity in her eyes.  Up-stairs there came the steady whirr of a sewing machine, where little Miss Dusenberry, the village dressmaker, was already deep in the mysteries of Jean’s trousseau.  In the living-room, Helen was practicing her vocal lesson, trying to follow the rules Mr. Ormond had given her, and Doris was completely hidden in the big, brown camp hammock under the maples reading a favorite book.  It seemed as though all the members of the family but herself were following their natural bent, and she couldn’t even see a natural bent ahead of her, nothing but a long winding trail that called.

She gave a quick sigh, and put her head down on her mother’s knee, almost as Doris might have done.

“I’ll go through with it, motherie,” she said, “high school and anything else you say, if only some day I can just drop everything and blaze my own paths.”

“Remember, you don’t blaze them for yourself, but for those who follow after.”  Mrs. Robbins put her arms down around the young shoulders that already longed to carry burdens.  “Stanley was telling us last night of the death of General Maude at Bagdad.  To me he is one of the great heroes of the war, and the word he left to his soldiers seems like a battle cry of inspiration to the race.  It was just this, ‘Carry on.’  It’s what we can’t avoid, Kit, no matter whether we find ourselves blazing new trails through the wilderness or trying to find the way to happiness right here in little old Gilead.  You have to ‘carry on’ for those who come after.”

Jean called to her for some advice immediately, and she hurried up-stairs.  Kit sat cogitating over what she had said, just as Stanley came through the orchard with a huge basket on his shoulder of early sweet apples, the first fruits of the Greenacre harvest.  He set them down beside her with the old whimsical laugh in his eyes.

“If you’ll be a real good girl, Kit, and never call me a berry hooker again, you can have first pick of these Shepherd Sweetings.”