Roxy's taste. It was more a living-room than a "cookery." There was no
library proper here, only the parlor, a large corner bedroom, and a
dining-room which took up the width of the house except for the hall. This
latter was the favorite consulting room of the girls, and to-day they were
all busily paring early apples and quinces to put down in stone crocks,
against the coming of winter days.

"Mother," called Helen, "were you ever in Delphi, where Uncle Cassius
lives?"

Mrs. Robbins sat down on the arm of Jean's chair and smiled at the eager
faces upturned to hers.

"Just once, long ago when I was about eight years old. We were passing
through on our way east from California, and mother stayed for about a
week at Delphi. It's a little college town on Lake Nadonis, about twelve
miles inland from Lake Michigan, and perhaps sixty miles north of Chicago
on the big bluffs that 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