E-text prepared by John Hagerson, Kevin Handy, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (www.pgdp.net) KIT OF GREENACRE FARM by IZOLA FORRESTER The World Syndicate Publishing Co. Cleveland, O. New York, N.Y. George W. Jacobs & Company 1919 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. "NO TRESPASSING" II. MRS. GORHAM SMELLS SMOKE III. KIT RISES TO PROPHESY IV. THE ORACLE AT DELPHI V. SHEPHERD SWEETINGS VI. EXPECTING "KIT" VII. PERSONALLY CONDUCTED VIII. AT THE SIGN OF THE MUMMY IX. ALL SANDY'S FAULT X. THE DEAN'S OUTPOSTS XI. "KEEP OUT" XII. KIT LOCATES A "FOUNDER" XIII. ENTER THE ROYAL MUMMIES XIV. IN HONOR OF MARCELLE XV. THE FAMILY ADVISES XVI. SHOPPING FOR SHAKESPEARE XVII. HOPE'S PRIMROSE PATH XVIII. STANLEY APOLOGIZES XIX. THE COURT OF APPEAL XX. HOGS AND HORACE XXI. THE CIRCLE OF RA XXII. HEADED FOR GILEAD XXIII. THE DEAN SEES THE STAR XXIV. THE TENTS OF GREENACRES XXV. COAXING THE WILDERNESS XXVI. PAYING GUESTS XXVII. HELENITA'S SONG-BIRD XXVIII. STANLEY PAYS AN OLD SCORE XXIX. KIT GIVES HER BLESSING XXX. FACING REALITY CHAPTER I "NO TRESPASSING" Kit was on lookout duty, and had been for the past hour and a half. The cupola room, with its six windows, commanded a panoramic view of the countryside, and from here she had done sentry duty over the huckleberry patch. It lay to the northeast of the house, a great, rambling, rocky, ten acre lot that straggled unevenly from the wood road down to the river. To the casual onlooker, it seemed just a patch of underbrush. There were half-grown birches all over it, and now and then a little dwarf spruce tree or cluster of hazel bushes. But to the girls of Greenacres, that ten acre lot represented a treasure trove in the month of August when huckleberries and blueberries were ripe. Shad said knowing the proper time to pick huckleberries was just born in one, so the girls had guarded the old pasture from any marauding youngsters or wayside peddlers. "You've got to keep a good eye out for them this year," Shad warned them. "Last year wasn't good for huckleberries, apples or nuts, but this is going to be a regular jubilee harvest. Them bushes up there are hanging so full that you can put up quarts and quarts and quarts of them and send huckleberry pies to the heathen all winter if you want to." And he had likewise warned them that that particular berry patch had been famous throughout the countryside ever since the days when Greenacres had belonged to the Trowbridges. Several times when it had happened to be a good year for the huckleberry crop, raiders had swept down and culled the best of the harvest. Not from around the near-by villages had they come, but from the small towns, ten or fifteen miles away.