Madame
Ormond has offered to come and sing for you. Ralph told us he heard she
gets a thousand dollars a night in New York, so you can see how honored
you are, Kit."

"Jean, look at me," said Kit suddenly. "Will you tell me something, honest
and true?"

"I think mother's calling." Jean's voice was rather hurried, as she
started for the door.

"No, she isn't any such thing. I want to know if you and Ralph are
engaged. I don't see why you should try to keep it a secret when everybody
thinks you are anyway. And a wedding in the family would be so exciting."

But Jean shook her head, coloring quickly, and hurried down-stairs, with
only a laugh for an answer. Kit stared out of the window, rather
resentfully. She would be sixteen in November, and Jean was past eighteen.
Eighteen loomed ahead of her as a year of discretion, a time when you
naturally came into your heritage of mature reason and common sense. She
remembered once the Dean remarking that the human brain did not reach its
full development until eighteen, and how at the time she resented it,
feeling absolutely sure at fifteen there was nothing under the sun she
could not understand fully.

But the tumble in the river and peril to her life had left her completely
stranded, as it were, upon an unknown shore of indecision. Evidently it
was just what Billie had called it, a fool stunt for her to try and row up
that river alone. Kit had always gone rather jauntily on her way doing as
she thought best with an unshakable confidence that nothing could happen
to her. Now she suddenly faced life with a new respect for the unexpected.
Snags and sunken trees in the way of intrepid voyagers were evidently
facts which one had to guard against.

Another thing, there was a very uncomfortable sensation around Kit's crown
of glory, for her enemy had heaped coals of fire on her head, and returned
good for evil in such an overwhelming measure, she never could repay him.
Surely twenty-four hours had made an enormous difference in Kit's outlook
on life, for she considered these things instead of the pink negligee on
the foot of the bed.

The afternoon of the third day she was allowed to sit down on the veranda
in a large willow armchair. Helen and Doris hovered over her quite as if
she had been the heroine of some romantic adventure, and nearly all the
tent colonists visited her in relays. Billie came up last of all, and
brought her a live walking-stick on a spray of sassafras,