line the shore nearly all the way to Milwaukee.
Uncle Cassius was a first settler there, I believe. You don't have to be
very old to have been a first settler in Wisconsin. I think about the
first thing he helped establish there was Hope College. I don't remember
so very much about it, girls, it was so long ago. I know I loved the
bluffs and the little winding paths that led up from the shore below, but
it seems to me Uncle Cassius' house was rather cheerless and formal. He
was a good deal of a scholar and antiquarian. Aunt Daphne seemed to me
just a deprecating little shadow that trotted after him, and made life
smooth."
Kit listened with the attentive curiosity of a squirrel, and Jean, who
knew every changing expression on her face, was sure she was having a
little private debate with herself.
"I don't think," continued Mrs. Robbins, easily, "that it is such a
misfortune after all our not having a boy to fill his order. It wouldn't
be a very cheerful or sympathetic home for any young person."
"Oh, but mother, dear," Kit burst forth, eagerly. "Think what glorious fun
it would be to train them, and make them understand how much more
interesting you can make life if you only take the right point of view."
"Yes, but supposing what seemed to be the right point of view to you, Kit,
was not the right point of view to them at all. Every one looks at life
from his own angle."
"Carlota always said that, too," Jean put in. "I remember at our art class
each student would see the subject from a different angle and sketch
accordingly. Carlota said it was exactly like life, where each one gets
his own perspective."
"But you can't get any perspective at all if you shut yourself up in the
dark," Kit argued. She leaned her chin on both palms, elbows planted
firmly on the table, as she prepared to influence the opinion of the
family. "Now just listen to this, and don't all speak at once until I get
through. You went away, Jean, down to New York, and then up to Boston, and
though I say it as shouldn't, right to your face, you came back to the
bosom of your family, very much better satisfied and pleasanter to live
with. I think after you've stayed in one place too long you get, well--as
Billie says, 'fed up' and wish to goodness you could get away somewhere. I
haven't any art at all, or anything special that I could wave at you and
demand 'expression' as Bab Crane calls it. What I need is something new to
develop my special gi
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