Kit laughed up at them, as she groped about on the floor picking up the scattered pages of notes. "Well, he's a relative, if you must know," she retorted. "He's my father's first cousin's husband's grandchild. Now haze me if you like." Vowing that this connection was altogether too nebulous to save her from the threatened penalty, the girls buried the hatchet for the time being in the entertainment of the guests. "I suppose Hope looks pretty small to you after the universities back east," Norma said to Billie, as they made the rounds of the buildings, after Amy had played hostess with Kit's help, and had brought down a goodly supply of fudge and peanut nougat. "Looks mighty good," returned Billie, heartily. "I think you can have loads more fun in a place like this than you can at the big schools. And you know, I'm not going to a university or anything of that sort. I'm just at the 'Prep' and taking up special branches outside with Mr. Howard." "What kind of branches?" queried Norma. "Oh, science, and physics, but specially entomology and forestry. He's in government service, you know." "He doesn't act a bit important or dignified, does he?" Norma said thoughtfully. "You'd almost think he was a sort of grown-up boy." "I wish I knew all he does. It's mighty nice for a fellow to have a friend like Stanley. It's like being a little bicycle running in the track of a speeding motorcycle. You may not be able to keep up, but it's mighty good exercise trying to hit the pace." Kit was walking behind the others with Amy and Anne. Now that they had joined the others, and the girls were talking about Stanley also, she had become strangely silent. "You don't know him very well, do you?" Amy asked, curiously. "I mean, he isn't related to you." Kit shook her head with bland indifference. "He's a friend of Billie's. I only met him down east when he came to chase the gypsy moth in Gilead." She did not add that with Shad's help and able cooperation, she had managed to curtail the chase of the gypsy moth, temporarily, by holding the chaser captive in the family corn-crib, but she inwardly suspected that Stanley was remembering it. Every once in a while she accidentally caught him looking at her, with a look of amused, interested retrospection that made her vaguely uncomfortable. As they left the campus, Norma, leading with Billie, took the street that led to the bluffs overlooking the lake, and somehow or other in the subsequent scramble down the narrow pathways, Kit found Stanley at her elbow. Even Jean could not have been more dignified or distant in her manner, but Stanley refused to be frozen out. "You know," he said, genially, "I've just found out something, Miss Kit. I forgave you long ago for locking me up in your corn-crib, and nearly landing me in the local calaboose, but you don't forgive me one bit for trespassing in your berry patch."