CHAPTER XIII

ENTER THE ROYAL MUMMIES

Kit deliberately planned her campaign for the following week, and the only
girl she took into her confidence was Anne Bellamy. It had been the
greatest relief, somehow, when Anne returned to Delphi for the fall term.
There was something good-natured and comfortably serene about Anne that
made her companionship a relief from that of the other girls. Jean often
said back home that Kit was such a bunch of fireworks herself, she always
needed the background of a calm silent night or a flaccid temperament, to
set her off properly.

"You know, Anne," Kit exclaimed, sinking with a luxurious sigh of content
down among the cushions on the broad couch in Anne's room, "I'd give
anything, sometimes, if I'd been an only child; of course, you've got a
brother, but you're the only girl. You don't know what it is to be one of
four. I share my room with Helen, back home, and all honors with Jean.
Then, of course, Doris is the baby, and while we all love each other
devotedly, still you do have to elbow your way through a large family, if
you want to keep on being yourself. I read somewhere about old Joaquin
Miller, the poet of the Sierras. Know him?"

Anne shook her head, as she combed out her long brown hair, holding one
roll with her teeth.

"No, I don't suppose you do," Kit went on happily. "That's one reason why
you and I are going to be fearfully good friends, 'cause you don't know
everything in creation. It seems to me I can't speak of anything at all at
home now that Jean doesn't know more about it than I do, or Helen thinks
she does, which is worse. Don't mind me this morning. I just got a family
budget, full of don'ts."

"Yes, and you're just as likely as not to be homesick to-morrow," laughed
Anne. "Go on about your poet."

"Oh, nothing, except that he didn't believe there should be more than one
room in a house, and he built little individual houses all over 'The
Heights' out in California. I'd love to do that back home, with a
dining-room on one green hill, and the kitchen down in the, valley."

"You'd need a mountain railway on an up grade, when it came meal time."

"Well maybe," Kit assented, "but at least I'd have my own bower in a pine
grove, and each of the royal princesses could go and do likewise. But that
isn't what I came over for. You know Marcelle Beaubien? The girls don't
like her going to Hope."

"Don't they?" Anne asked, mildly. "Well, what are they g