ite
anything in those days, you just picked up a handful of mud and made a
little brick out of it, and wrote away with a stick, didn't you?"

"Stylus, my boy, stylus," corrected the Dean, absently. "Yes, I doubt not
but what it did away with much of our modern detail."

"Oh," exclaimed Kit, suddenly, "I left all the notes on Semele in the
library. I'm awfully sorry, Uncle Cassius, but when I saw Billy standing
there unexpectedly, I just forgot everything. We can walk up there this
afternoon and get them. Is the statue very beautiful?"

"Perfect, perfect," murmured the Dean, as he still hung over the urn
abstractedly. "It's just behind you, my dear."

Kit turned, expecting to face one of the usual blandly smiling Egyptian
colossi, even in miniature, with a few wings scattered over it here and
there. But instead, there stood in the center of the Dean's library table
a strangely attenuated figure about three feet high. As Billie said
afterwards, it appeared to be dancing the Grasshopper's Nocturnal
Rhapsody. It had a head that was a cross between an intelligent antelope
and a rather toploftical baby rat. Its arms were extended at sharp angles,
and seemed to be pointing in arch accusation at one. Wings spread fanwise
from the shoulders, and its feet were like the feet of a griffin.

"I never thought it would look just like that, did you, Billie?" Kit asked
confidentially, when they started back to the campus, after the notes on
Semele.

"Well, I knew well what to expect, because we've been doing the
Smithsonian Institute pretty well," responded Billie, rather knowingly.
"Some of them look worse than that. But they can't beat our own little
Alaskan and Mexican beauties. I wonder what people were thinking about
back in those days to worship that sort of thing?"

But Kit caught sight of five of the girls just rounding the corner after a
hike along the shore, and she hailed them, much to Billie's inward
disgust. While he approved thoroughly of Kit, he viewed the average girl
from a safe altitude indifference. But Kit introduced him in an off-hand,
casual manner which put him at his ease, and when they started up the
primrose path, it was the "Jinx" herself who had taken possession of
Billie, and was interesting him thoroughly, telling of her father's big
stock farm outside of Maquoketa.

They found Stanley Howard awaiting them on one of the big tree seats,
outside the Hall. Clayton was with him, strumming on a ukulele,