ights of fancy.

"You look more like Brunehilda the Golden-haired," she said. "There's one
thing about us Robbinses, nobody can say that we lack courage in our
ambitions."

"Oh, but Kit, Madame Ormond says that she is sure my voice will develop
into something worth while."

"Well, let's hope so, anyhow," Kit answered, practically, but with an
affectionate squeeze that took away any offense from her words. "You know
that old favorite saying of Cousin Roxy's, 'It's better to aim at the
stars and hit the bar post, than to aim at the bar post and hit the
ground.'"

Helen turned around, an anxious look in her blue eyes.

"You're always so matter-of-fact, Kit. You see, I am fourteen now, and
it's about time I was having some kind of an ambition. Isn't there
anything at all that you long to do more than anything in the world?
Something that you've thought and thought about for months and months
until it became like a light ahead of you?"

Kit sat down on the edge of the bed and thought a minute. Life had never
presented itself to her in vistas. She lived each day as it came with an
unconquerable optimism, such as no one else except Cousin Roxy seemed to
possess in the family.

"Don't worry, Kit," Mrs. Ellis was wont to say to her, cheerily. "Good
works and an abiding faith yoked up with a sense of humor will carry any
one to the golden gates."

And perhaps secretly Kit had always considered personal ambition a little
private form of selfishness. As she ransacked her mind now, trying to find
her own ambition and get it safely on a pin for examination like one of
Billie's specimens, only her old-time love of forestry answered her.

"I guess I'm a kind of a gypsy, Helenita," she sighed regretfully, "'cause
there isn't anything I really want to do so much as travel and hit new
trails. I don't just want to start out like Jean is doing and rush over
three thousand just to settle down at the other end for ever and ever. I'd
want to keep on going. It's such a comfort to know that the world is round
after all, and you can't topple off the end."

Helen regarded her doubtfully.

"You know, I heard Stanley talking almost exactly like that. He said that
after his work was finished in France he would just want to travel on and
on into all the beautiful, lonesome places of the world, where there had
never been any war."

Kit stared at her in startled amazement.

"In France?" she repeated. "Billie never said a word about it."