Just as Carlota started to say more there came a long hail from the hill, and coming down they saw Kit and Sally Peckham, with long wooden staffs. Sally dawned on Carlota with quite as much force as Piney had. Her heavy red gold hair hung today in two long plaits down her back. She wore a home-made blue cloth skirt and a loose blouse of dark red, with the neck turned in, and one of her brothers’ hats, a grey felt affair that she had stuck a quail’s wing in. “Hello,” called Kit, “we’ve been for a hike, clear over to the village. Mother ’phoned she needed some things from the drug store, so we thought we’d walk over and get them. Billie’s just the same. He don’t know a soul, and all he talks about is making his math. exams. I think it’s perfectly shameful to take a boy like that who loves reading and nature and natural things, and grind him down to regular stuff.” She reached the stone gateway, and sat down on a rock to rest, while Jean introduced Sally, who bowed shyly to the slim strange girl in black. “I didn’t know you had company, excepting Mr. McRae,” she said. “Kit wanted me to walk over with her.” “I love a good long hike,” interrupted Kit. “Specially when I feel bothered or indignant. We’ve kept up the hike club ever since the roads opened up, Jean. It’s more fun than anything out here, I never realized there was so much to know about just woods and fields until Sally taught me where to hunt for things. Do you like to hike, Carlota?” “Hike?” repeated Carlota, puzzled. “What is it?” “A hike is a long walk.” Carlota laughed in her easy-going way. “I don’t know. Not too long. I think I’d rather ride.” “I also,” Helen said flatly. “I don’t see a bit of fun dragging around like Kit does, through the woods and over swamps, climbing hills, and always wanting to get to the top of the next one.” “Oh, but I love to,” Kit chanted. “Maybe I’ll be a mountain climber yet. Children, you don’t grasp that it is something strange and interesting in my own special temperament. The longing to attain, the—the insatiable desire to seize adventure and follow her fleeing footsteps, the longing to tap the stars on their foreheads and let them know I’m here.” “Kit’s often like this,” said Helen, confidentially to Carlota. “You mustn’t mind her a bit. You see, she believes she is the genius of the family, and sometimes, I do too, almost.” “There may be a spark in each of us,” Kit said generously. “I’ll not claim it all. Let’s get back to the house. I’m famished, and I’ve coaxed Sally to stay and lunch with us.” “What good times many can have,” Carlota slipped her arm in Jean’s on the walk back through the garden. “Sometimes I wish I had been many too, I mean with brothers and sisters. You feel so oddly when you are all the family in yourself.”