“Hello,” she said.  “I think you’ve got an awfully nice place down here.  I like it because it looks old like our houses back home.  All the other places I’ve seen since I came west have looked so newly painted.”

“This isn’t new,” the girl told her slowly.  “This place belonged to my grandfather’s father, Louis Beaubien.  There were Indians around here then.  Most of them ’Jibways.”

Jean used to say that the instant Kit’s curiosity was aroused, she was just exactly like a squirrel after nuts, and here was an entirely new field of romance and adventure to be uncovered.  She fairly sniffed the air.  The wonderful old grandmother, basking in the sun with memories of the past like a Mother Time.  The strong, tanned boys working at the nets, the flock of dark-skinned youngsters, and the girl, Marcelle, whom she was to know so well before her stay in Delphi was over.

She hurried back, eager to ask questions about the Beaubiens, and found herself late for breakfast the very first morning she was there.  The Dean’s face was a study as she entered, and Miss Daphne’s fingers fluttered somewhat nervously over the coffee urn, and fragile cups.  Kit was out of breath, and so full of excitement that she did not even notice the air was chill.

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful time,” she began.  “No coffee, Aunt Daphne, please.  Mother doesn’t allow me to have any.  It’s all Sandy’s fault.  I just wanted to run down the bluff to the shore, and he led me way round that headland to the funniest old house, half-sunken in the sand, and I got acquainted with the old grandmother and Marcelle.  The boys and the little youngsters seemed half-scared to death at the sight of me, and so I didn’t bother to get acquainted with them yet.”

The Dean looked up at her over his glasses with a quizzical expression, and Miss Daphne fairly caught her breath.

“The Beaubiens on the shore, my dear?” she asked.  “Those half-breed French Canadians?”

“Well, I didn’t know just what they were,” answered Kit, cheerfully, “but I think they’re awfully interesting.  Don’t you think that they look like the Breton fisher people in some of the old French paintings?  That girl looked just exactly like the youngest one crossing the sands at low tide at St. Malo.  We have the painting at home, and I love it.  And there was another girl about thirteen that I saw staring at me from the kitchen, and she looked just like ‘The Song of the Lark’ girl where she’s crossing the fields at dawn.”

“The Beaubiens have not a very good reputation, my dear,” the Dean coughed slightly behind his hand as he spoke.  “The present generation may be law-abiding, but even within my memory, the Beaubiens had a little habit of smuggling.”

“Smuggling?” repeated Kit, interestedly.  “How could they smuggle way off here?”

“Very easily.  There were schooners that used to make the run down from the Canadian shore around the Straits carrying contraband goods in war time.  Besides, there is the Indian strain in them, and they are squatters.  There have been several lawsuits against them, and they have persisted in staying there on the shore when the property owners on the bluff distinctly purchased riparian rights.”