"Daphne is well provided for in case of my passing over," he said, genially and unexpectedly, the last evening he was with them, "and I have been thinking a good deal lately over what Kit has well named the folly of 'dead men's shoes.'" He turned to where Mr. Robbins sat on the opposite side of the round library table, nearest the fire. "So I've taken the liberty, Jerry, of making over to you now what you would have had inevitably some day. Don't say anything, please. It's a personal indulgence on my part. I want to see, while I am alive, just exactly how much happiness it will bring you and yours. It is all well invested, but you may do as you like with it. I would suggest that you would live on the income, and stop worrying." And when both Mr. Robbins and the Mother Bird tried to expostulate, the Dean only laughed at them, brushing their arguments aside. "Why, if I were to turn over everything I own to the clan of Robbins, I could hardly pay back all that Kit has done for me. I'm a new man, Jerry. Sometimes I feel like a prehistoric toad just released from a clay-bank and blinking in the sunlight. Not only has she taught me the joy of living, but through her ingenuity she brought about one of the greatest discoveries that has been made in years on ancient Egypt. I feel guilty in taking any credit for it whatsoever, for while I was groping blindly after the solution, she put her finger, as it were, on the whole source of the trouble." After they had returned west, and Jean had gone back to New York, Kit found her opportunity of laying her summer plan before her mother and father. "There are acres and acres here that we never use at all. All that wonderful land on both sides of the river up through the valley, and the two islands besides. What I thought we could do was this, if you could just let us girls manage it. Couldn't we start a regular tent colony? Jean was telling me before she left about an artists' colony up in the Catskills, where they have tents fitted up for light housekeeping, and I'm sure we could do it here." It had taken much argument and figuring on paper before the consent of both was won, but Cousin Roxy approved of the scheme highly. "Land alive, Elizabeth Ann," she exclaimed, heartily, "don't crush anything that looks like budding initiative in your girls. I'd let them put tents all over the place until it blossomed like the wilderness. There's a stack of old furniture up in the garret at Maple Lawn and over at Elmhurst, too, and they're welcome to it. Get some pots of paint in and go to work, girls." Kit acted immediately on the suggestion and drove up with Shad to look over the collection of discarded antiques in the two garrets. What she liked best of all were the three-drawer, old-fashioned chests and hand-made wooden chairs. There were ewer stands also, and several old single slat bedsteads.