HINPOHA'S ROMANCE
An indistinct murmur floated down from the Winnebago room of the Open
Door Lodge, punctuated by little squeals and exclamations. The firelight
shown on four tense faces, and four pairs of eyes were riveted on the two
figures in the center of the group who were engaged in a very singular
occupation. Balanced between two stiffly outstretched and quivering right
forefingers hung a key, and suspended from it by a string was a
black-covered book, supposed to be set apart from all secular uses. In a
breathless undertone Hinpoha--for she was the owner of one of the
aforesaid fingers--was chanting a passage of scripture designed for a
widely different application. A strained hush was followed by another
outbreak of exclamations. "Look, it's turning! It began to turn the
minute she said, 'Turn, my beloved.' What letter did it turn on, 'Poha?"
"D," replied Hinpoha, in a solemn whisper.
"D," repeated the chorus, "what does that stand for?"
"Daniel," supplied Sahwah promptly.
"His name's going to be Daniel," chanted the chorus. "Now try for the
last name."
Again the mystic rite was performed. At "I" the Bible trembled with a
premonitory movement. "It's turning!" whispered the chorus in an awed
tone. "No, it isn't either; it's still again." After that one tremor the
soothsaying volume remained bafflingly motionless through the recitation
of the mysteries which accompanied the letter J. K likewise began
uneventfully. But no sooner had Hinpoha uttered the fateful words, "Turn,
my beloved," when with a suddenness that scared them half out of their
wits the key turned sharply in the supporting fingers, twisted itself
free and fell to the floor with an emphatic bang.
"It's K," cried Hinpoha, covering her face with her hands. "What names
begin with K?"
"King," said Gladys.
"Knight," suggested Katherine.
"All the noble names," said Nakwisi dreamily.
"Mrs. Daniel King," said Sahwah experimentally, whereupon Hinpoha hid her
face in the bearskin rug.
"You try it, Katherine," said Gladys. "I'll hold the key with you."
"Oh, I'm afraid to try it," said Katherine, hanging back and looking
uncomfortable. "It's no use, anyway; nobody'd have me for a gift."
"It always tells the truth," said the blushing Hinpoha. "You know Miss
Vining, Clara Morrison's old maid aunt? Well, Clara persuaded her to try
it and it wouldn't turn for her at all, and they went through the
alphabet three times in succession."
With a skeptical expression Katherine suffered herself to be placed on
the box covered with an old piece of tapestry displaying a threadbare
figure of the three fates, which was the seat of those engaged in the
mysteries. "My beloved is mine, and I am his," she recited jerkily,
keeping her eyes glued to the key. "He feedeth upon a row of lilies----"
"It's 'He feedeth upon the lilies,' just 'the lilies'; the 'row' part
comes later," interrupted Gladys in a sharp whisper.
"He feedeth upon the lilies, just the lilies, the row part----" repeated
Katherine dutifully.
"No, no; it's all wrong," said Gladys impatiently. "Begin again."
"My beloved is mine----"
"Katherine! Oh-h-h-h Katherine! Are you up there?" the voice of Slim
suddenly called from below.
The girls all started guiltily and fell into confusion. "Sh! Hide the
Bible, quick!" cried Hinpoha in a sibilant whisper, darting forward and
snatching it from Katherine's hand and concealing it under the bear rug.
"What are you girls doing up there?" came from below.
"Oh, nothing," floated down the illuminating reply from above.
If Nyoda had not been so completely engrossed in her private affairs just
at this time she would have noticed the subtle undercurrent which seemed
to have caught hold of the toes of the entire feminine half of the senior
class at Washington High. It was not the Winnebagos only. In fact, they
had caught it from the others. Every class has its epidemic, be it
tonsillitis, friendship link bracelets or Knox hats. This year it was
fortune telling. Where the mystic rite described above originated nobody
could exactly tell, but in less than a week every girl in the class had
been initiated into the secret, and was busy discovering what her future
initials were to be. The performance was always carried on behind locked
doors or in places otherwise secure from adult eyes, and was often
interrupted right at the most exciting point by approaching footsteps,
but questions as to how the innocent maids had been improving the shining
hour invariably brought out the reply, "Oh, we weren't doing
_anything_--much." Missing keys and books of family worship led to
embarrassing questions once in a while, but somehow the situation was
always bridged over and parents and teachers never really did find out
what the fascinating something was that drew their young friends off into
groups by themselves from which they emerged to day dream instead of
getting their lessons and to make mysterious references to certain
initials.
The book and key oracle reigned supreme for several weeks and then gave
place to the horoscope. For ten cents in stamps a certain seer dwelling
in a remote town in Oregon offered to "cast" the principal events, past,
present and future, in the lives of all young lady correspondents. It was
not long before intimate heads were bent over scraps of paper comparing
horoscopes. Hinpoha's was acknowledged by all to be the gem of the
collection.
"You have a brilliant future before you," it read. "You will have a
romantic love affair and will marry your first lover. He is a great
scholar who will afterwards become president. You will meet him when you
are very young." Then followed a dozen lines more of brilliant prophecy.
The special friends of Hinpoha, who had been allowed to peep at her
fortune, Gladys, Sahwah, Katherine, Nakwisi and Medmangi, and one or two
others, who had fore-gathered ostensibly to rehearse a school song, sat
back and regarded their fortunate friend with awe. None of their fortunes
had contained anything so dazzling.
"You're going to be the President's wife!" murmured Sahwah. "You won't
forget us, will you?"
"Never!" declared Hinpoha magnanimously, stealing a sly glance into the
mirror.
"I hope you won't be ashamed of me when I'm married and come calling at
the White House," said Katherine, rather dolefully. "All I drew was a
farmer."
"I only got an automobile manufacturer," echoed Gladys.
"That's what comes of having red hair," said Sahwah enviously. "Her
fortune said he would be drawn to her by her beautiful tresses."
When Hinpoha was preparing for bed that night she stood fully an hour
before the mirror and regarded her shining curls. Up until now she had
never paid much attention to them except when the boys called her redhead
and pretended to light matches on her head, and then she wished with all
her heart, like the little girl in the song, that she had been "born a
blonde." Now for the first time her hair appeared beautiful to her. She
arranged the curls this way and that, piling them on her head and letting
them fall over her white shoulders. And all night she dreamed of standing
up in a carriage and bowing graciously to cheering multitudes and
clasping in her arms the forms of her girlhood friends who were among the
crowd.
The horoscopes had their day and gave way to something still more
exciting, something so secret that at first it could not be mentioned in
words, but was only alluded to by mysterious references.
"Marjorie King went," said Gladys to Hinpoha, "and she won't tell a thing
she found out, but she says it was the grandest thing."
"I don't believe it's worth fifty cents," said Sahwah skeptically.
"Anyhow, I haven't that much to spend."
"You don't ever dare tell anybody, they say, not a soul," reported Gladys
later. "If you do, the nice things won't happen and the bad ones surely
will."
"She's the Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter," observed Hinpoha in
an awe-stricken tone. "Did you ever hear of anything so wonderful?"
"Are _you_?" asked Sahwah anxiously, of Hinpoha.
This last question was entirely unrelated to the preceding statement
concerning the Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter. It was part of the
cryptic jargon employed in the discussion of a momentous question.
"I don't know," answered Hinpoha uncertainly. "Would you?"
"Oh, do," begged Gladys, "and then if you find out something nice we'll
go in after you. Oh, I forgot, you can't tell us anything."
"Would your mother mind if you did?" asked Hinpoha, hesitating on the
brink.
"She really wouldn't mind, but she'd think it awfully silly," answered
Gladys, "so I don't believe I'll tell her."
"You might find out the whole name," said Sahwah, looking at Hinpoha.
"And just when it's going to happen," finished Gladys.
Hinpoha suddenly made up her mind. "I believe I will," she said, looking
at Sahwah.
Where Hinpoha's thoughts were the next day in school nobody knew, but
they were certainly not on her lessons. She failed signally in every
class.
"And what were the initials of the great poet, Longfellow?" cooed Miss
Snively, in her honeydrip voice.
The word "initials" penetrated Hinpoha's wandering mind. "D. K.," she
murmured dreamily.
"Indeed?" purred Miss Snively. "Can it be that I have been misinformed?"
But today sarcasm was lost on Hinpoha.
After school was out a select group, half of which seemed to be hanging
back and being coaxed on by the other half, walked ten blocks to an
unfamiliar car line and transferred to a cross-town line. There was a
much more direct route to their destination, but that laid them open to
the risk of meeting friends and relatives who might casually inquire
whither they were bound. Just wherein lay the crime in what they were
doing, no one could have told, nor why it should be kept such a dark
secret, but singly and collectively they would have died rather than
reveal the nature of the latest epidemic.
By devious ways they reached the end of their journey and stood
irresolute on the sidewalk before a house which bore a plate on the door
announcing that that same roof sheltered the object of their desire.
"Shall we all go in together?" whispered Gladys. There was no need of
whispering, for no one was within earshot, but with one accord they
lowered their voices. They went up the steps and held another
consultation. "You ring the bell," said Gladys.
"No, you ring it," said Hinpoha. Thus encouraged, Hinpoha pushed the
button, the door swung inward and they passed through. An hour later they
stood on the corner again, waiting for the car to take them home.
"Did she say anything about--about----" inquired Gladys.
Hinpoha clapped her hand over her mouth and made inarticulate sounds
beneath it, but her eyes were sparkling, as they never sparkled before.
"Excuse me," gasped Gladys; "I forgot you mustn't tell."
"Can't you give us a hint?" begged Sahwah, who had gone along for moral
support.
Hinpoha shook her head and retained her finger on her lips to stop any
leaks.
"Well, it couldn't have been any nicer than mine," said Gladys, with an
air of satisfaction. "Mine was just splendid. Maybe yours
wasn't--favorable?" she added, stricken with a sudden doubt as to the
superiority of Hinpoha's future.
"It was, too!" declared Hinpoha. "If you took all the nice things out of
ten fortunes it wouldn't be as nice as mine!"
Gladys looked unconvinced. "Well, we'll wait a year or two until they
begin to come true, and then we'll see which had the nicer," she
remarked.
Hinpoha laughed outright. "I don't have to wait a year or two before mine
comes true," she announced triumphantly. "It's coming true in the very
near future. I'm going to meet a light-haired young man and he's going to
admire my hair and fall in love with me, so there! Is yours any nicer
than that?"
"Oh, you told," cried Sahwah. "Now it won't come true."
Hinpoha stopped in dismay. "Well, Gladys made me," she wailed. "If she
hadn't said hers was better----" The car came along then and a truce was
patched up. Such a delicate subject could not be discussed openly in the
street-car, even to quarrel about it.
But if Hinpoha spent a bad night mourning because she had broken the
spell of her good fortune, the next day sent all doubts flying to the
winds. The week before the bald-headed teacher of the literature class
had occasioned a bad break in the routine of the course by
inconsiderately dying of pneumonia in the middle of the term. For several
days thereafter the grief of the class was tempered by the fact that
there were no recitations. But on the day after Gladys and Hinpoha, with
Sahwah and Katherine as chaperones, had visited the Seventh Daughter of a
Seventh Daughter, an announcement appeared on the session room blackboard
to the effect that literature recitations would be resumed that morning.
As they filed into the literature class room they were greeted by the
sight of the new teacher standing beside the desk.
"Boys and girls," said the principal, who was doing the honors, "this is
Mr. David Knoblock, who will have charge of this class in the future."
And he hurried out.
"David Knoblock!" whispered the wit of the class to his neighbor.
"Knoblock, No Block, see?" And a titter ran through the class.
"David Knoblock!" said Katherine to herself. "He looks as though his name
might be Percy Pimpernell."
"David Knoblock!" repeated Hinpoha to herself, and sat mute before the
workings of fate. David Knoblock. D. K. The Car of Destiny had stopped
before her door and from it had alighted the fair-haired stranger!
Standing before the class in the glory of his yellow hair, pale,
sprouting mustache, blue eyes and pink cheeks, Mr. Knoblock seemed to
them a composite of Adonis, Paris and Apollo Belvidere, whose mythical
charms had been impressed upon them by the late lamented instructor.
"What has the class been reading, Miss--ah--Miss Katherine?" he inquired,
consulting the class roll.
"Tennyson, Mr. Knoblock," answered Katherine briefly.
"_Professor_ Knoblock, if you please," he corrected gently. "Ah, yes;
Tennyson." And turning the pages of his book with a manicured finger, he
found the place and began to read aloud, glancing up at one or another of
his girl pupils from time to time. More and more often that glance rested
on Hinpoha, for with the sun shining through the window on her hair she
was the most vivid spot of color in the room. Finally he did not take his
eyes away at all, and, looking her straight in the face, he read in
sentimental tones:
"Queen of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,
In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen, lily and rose, in one;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers, and be their sun."
In the blaze of that glance Hinpoha's romantic heart melted like a lump
of wax. The room swam in a rose-colored mist. The great thing that she
had read about in books had happened to her; she was in love! It was not
long before the whole school knew about the affair. Whenever there was a
sentimental passage in the book Professor Knoblock looked at Hinpoha and
at her alone. He often detained her a moment after class to inquire if
that last paragraph had been entirely clear to her; he thought she had
looked not quite satisfied with his explanation. As he roomed in the next
street to her home he generally met her on the corner in the morning and
walked to school with her. Certain sour-dispositioned damsels in the
class, who had made eyes at the new Lochinvar in vain, made sneering
remarks about a girl who had so few boy friends in the class that she had
to ogle a teacher; others sighed enviously when they looked at her
woman's crown of glory and realized their handicap; the Winnebagos
regarded the whole thing as the workings of fate, pure and simple, for
was it not even as the Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter had
predicted?
As for Hinpoha herself, she was too transported to care what anyone else
thought about it. She was surrounded by a rarified atmosphere and the
voices of earth troubled her not. Just now she sat blushing deeply and
crushing in her hand a note which had appeared mysteriously between the
pages of her _Selections from the Standard English Poets_. It was written
in Mr. Knoblock's slanting backhand, and read:
"My Dear Miss Bradford:
"Never have I seen such glorious hair as yours. I cannot take my eyes
from it while you are in the room, and it haunts me by night. May I ask a
great favor of you--that you grant me one lock, one small lock, as a
keepsake? I fear you will be too modest to make this gift in person, and
all I ask is that you slip it into the dictionary on my desk."
The signature was a long ornamental K, with a running vine entwined about
its upright stroke.
Hinpoha scarcely raised her eyes above the level of her book during the
whole recitation. She sat nervously toying with a long perfect curl that
hung down over her shoulder. Toward the close of the recitation period
she came out of her abstraction and touched the boy in front of her on
the shoulder. "Lend me your penknife," she whispered in answer to his
look of inquiry. The Senior Literature Class occupied the last hour of
the day, and as Mr. Knoblock had no session room, the passing of the
class left the room empty. On this day Mr. Knoblock left the room with
the class on the stroke of the bell, and the boys and girls, trooping out
in a hurry to get home, did not notice that Hinpoha loitered. She glanced
around nervously, satisfied herself that she was unobserved and then
darted toward the dictionary on Mr. Knoblock's desk. Going out of the
door a minute later she ran violently into Katherine, who had carried out
her inkwell instead of her English book, and was coming back to replace
it. Katherine looked at her curiously.
"Excuse me," said Hinpoha in a flustered tone, "I really didn't see you.
I was thinking about something."
Hinpoha looked at Mr. Knoblock with an air of expectancy when she entered
the room the next morning, looking for some sign of gratitude for the
lock of hair, but he said, "Good morning, Miss Bradford," in his usual
tone and made no further remarks. But before the hour was over he took
occasion to borrow her book for a moment, and directly after he returned
it a note fell from its pages into her lap. With starry eyes she unfolded
it and read:
"O Morning Star that smilest in the blue,
O star, my morning dream hath proven true,
Smile sweetly, thou! my love hath smiled on me."
The lines were from "Gareth and Lynette." The universe turned into song.
It was getting altogether too much for Hinpoha to hold and that afternoon
before the fire in the Open Door Lodge she revealed the progress of her
romance to the other Winnebagos.
"Did you really give him a lock of your hair?" asked Gladys.
Hinpoha nodded. "Just a tiny curl. It doesn't show much at all where I
cut it out."
"Collecting locks of hair doesn't mean so terribly much," said Katherine
dryly. "I read about a boy once who begged a lock of hair from every girl
he met and then had his sister embroider a sofa cushion with them. And
another one used them for paint brushes."
"Oh, but this is--different," said Hinpoha with lofty pity. It had just
dawned on her that Katherine was jealous. The same miracle that had
dropped the scales from her eyes and revealed to her the fact that she
was beautiful had also made her realize that Katherine was hopelessly
plain.
"And then the verse he wrote afterward," said Gladys, hastening to uphold
Hinpoha. "That proves he is in earnest. And, anyway, it must be true.
Didn't all the fortunes say he was fair and his initials were D. K., and
he was a great scholar, and would be president, and he would fall in love
with Hinpoha's hair?" And Katherine had to admit that whatsoever was
written in the stars was written.
It mattered little to any of them, Hinpoha least of all, that Professor
Knoblock had thus far said nothing openly upon the subject to Hinpoha.
"Isn't his bashfulness adorable?" cooed Gladys. "He's too shy to express
himself face to face with her; he puts all his--his passion into
writing."
"Won't those notes be lovely to read over together when you're old?" said
Sahwah, also stricken with a sentimental fit. But at the mere mention of
such a thing Hinpoha fled with burning cheeks.
"Hello, Red," said a cheerful voice in her ear, as she went dreaming down
the street one day. "Where have you been keeping yourself for the last
few weeks? You haven't been down in the gym once."
"Hello, Captain," she said sweetly. (How young he was, she was thinking.
How hopelessly kiddish beside the manly form of Professor Knoblock!)
"Say, you must have your tin ear on today," remarked the Captain
jovially. "I had to call you three times before you answered."
"I was thinking," said Hinpoha, and blushed.
"Must have been an awful hard think," remarked the Captain, stooping to
throw a stone at a cat. (He's nothing but a kid, thought Hinpoha for the
second time.)
It was on this occasion that the Captain, happily believing all was well
between himself and Hinpoha, invited her to go to the Senior dance at
Washington High with him.
"I'm awfully sorry, Captain," she said kindly, "but I'm going
with--someone else."
"Who?" asked the Captain blankly. The "bid" for that party had cost the
Captain just a dollar and a half, as he was not a member of the class,
and he had made the investment for the sake of going with Hinpoha and no
one else. So he repeated in a startled tone, "Who?"
"Oh, someone," answered Hinpoha tantalizingly, and with that he had to be
content. To herself she was saying, "How foolish it would be to promise
to go with the Captain and then not be able to accept when--when _he_
asks me." For word had gone round the school that all the faculty were
going to honor the Senior Dance with their presence, and whom else would
Professor Knoblock ask but herself?
But of all things to happen just at this time, the very next day Hinpoha
came down with the mumps, or rather the mump, for only one side of her
throat was affected. The first half she had had in childhood.
"That horrid mump stayed away on purpose before," she wailed, "and waited
all these years to jump out on me just at this time. And my new party
dress is too sweet for anything, and my gilt slippers--oh-oh-oh-oh was
there ever such a disappointment?" Gladys and Sahwah and Katherine, who
had all had theirs "on both sides" and were therefore allowed to call,
were consumed with sympathy, and were loud in their efforts to console
the stricken mumpee.
"Has _he_ come to see you?" ventured Gladys.
Hinpoha shook her head, which was a somewhat painful process.
"Of course he can't come," said Sahwah, "he probably hasn't had them."
Katherine's expression seemed to say that a really brave knight wouldn't
hesitate to expose himself to any danger for the sake of seeing his lady,
seeing which Hinpoha croaked hoarsely, "They probably wouldn't let him
come," the "they" in this case presumably referring to the school
authorities.
"I saw him down in Forester's this noon when I was ordering the flowers
for mother's birthday," said Gladys, and they all sighed.
Just then the doorbell rang and Gladys, who was sent to answer it,
returned with a long box in her hand addressed to "Miss Dorothy
Bradford."
"From Foresters," said Sahwah breathlessly.
"Flowers!" said Gladys. "Hurry and open them."
The box disclosed a dozen, long-stemmed pink roses. "Oh! Ah!" echoed the
four in unison.
"From--him?" asked Gladys.
"There's no card in the box," said Hinpoha, vainly searching.
"They must be from him," said Gladys decidedly. "Wasn't he in Forester's
this morning? And it seemed to me I heard him asking for pink roses."
Hinpoha put the flowers in a tall vase and regarded them with rapture.
They were the first flowers ever sent to her by a man. In them she found
comfort for having to miss the dance.
"Was he there?" she inquired falteringly of Gladys, the day after the
party.
Gladys answered in the affirmative. "Did--did any of you dance with him?"
Hinpoha wanted to know further.
Gladys shook her head. "I saw him dancing once or twice with Miss
Snively," she said. "I don't believe he stayed very long. He disappeared
before it was half over."
Hinpoha was satisfied. He had not enjoyed himself without her. "Wasn't it
noble of him to dance with Miss Snively?" she said enthusiastically. "No
one else would, I'm sure."
At Commencement time the year before an old Washington High graduate, who
had attained fame and fortune since his school days, presented the school
with funds to build a swimming pool. Work had progressed during the year
and now the pool was completed and about to be dedicated. An elaborate
pageant was being prepared for the occasion. Mermaids and water nymphs
were to gambol about in the green, glassy depths and lie on the painted
coral reefs; Neptune was to rise from the deep with his trident; a
garland bedecked barge was to bear a queen and her attendants; and then
after the pageant there were to be swimming races, an exhibition of
diving and then a stunt contest.
The Winnebagos, being experienced swimmers, were very much in the show.
Sahwah had invented a brand new and difficult dive, which she had
christened Mammy Moon; Hinpoha had learned the amazing trick of sitting
down in the water and clasping her hands around her knees; Gladys could
swim the entire length of the pool with the leg stroke only, holding a
parasol over her head with her hands, thus giving the impression that she
was taking a stroll on a sunshiny day. Katherine, alas, could not swim.
The largest body of water she had seen at home had been the cistern, and
most of the time it was low tide in that. But this did not prevent her
from thinking up new and ludicrous stunts for the others to do. It was
she who invented the "Kite-tail" stunt, which was one of the signal
successes on the night of the pageant. In this one of the senior boys,
who was a very powerful swimmer, swam ahead with a rope tied around his
waist, to which another performer clung. Behind this second one four or
five more boys were strung out like the tail of a kite, each one holding
on to the heels of the one ahead, and all towed by the first swimmer.
The great night arrived and the building which housed the pool was
crowded to the doors. The Senior girls and boys had spent hours
decorating the hall with festoons of greens and potted palms and ferns,
so that it looked like the depths of a forest in the center of which the
pool glittered like a magic spring. Cries of admiration rose from the
audience all around. Hinpoha, who in the first part of the performance
was a mermaid, with water lilies plaited in her shining hair, saw only
one face in the crowd, and that was Professor Knoblock, as he leaned over
the polished brass rail and looked at her, and looked, and looked, and
looked. Only that day Hinpoha, filled with the spirit of romance, had
slipped a note into the dictionary on his desk, at the beginning of the
letter "L," the place where she had put the lock of hair, thanking
Professor Knoblock for the flowers. An hour later, in sudden terror that
he would not find it there and someone else would, she had gone to remove
it. But it had vanished, and in its place was another verse from Gareth
and Lynette:
"O birds that warble to the morning sky,
O birds that warble as the day goes by,
Sing sweetly; twice my love hath smiled on me."
The opening of the pool was a success in every way. The nymphs nymphed,
and the mermaids wagged their spangled tails to the delight and wonder of
the spectators, and the royal barge swept up and down to the strains of
stately music. Then the pageant retired, the islands folded up their
tents and vanished, and the swimmers went behind the scenes to prepare
for the races and the stunts. To bridge over this interval, Hinpoha had
been left in the pool all alone to amuse the crowd by floating on a
barrel and trying to balance a tray on her head as she bobbed up and
down. The crowd shouted with laughter and cheered her wildly. All but
one. With arms crossed triumphantly over her breast and tray steady on
her head, Hinpoha looked up to see Miss Snively standing by the edge
regarding her with a coldly sarcastic expression. It was as if she said
in words, "Only such a flathead as you could balance a tray on it." But
the great happiness that surged inside of Hinpoha made her charitable and
forgiving toward all the world, and she sent a sweet and friendly smile
into Miss Snively's face. But that marble-hearted lady looked away. The
next minute there was a slip, a shriek, the flash of a silk dress, and a
splash, and Miss Snively had disappeared beneath the surface at the deep
end of the pool. Hurling the tray into space Hinpoha made a magnificent
plunge for distance toward the spot where Miss Snively had gone down.
Simultaneously with her plunge there was another movement in the crowd,
and Professor Knoblock, stripping off his coat, jumped over the rail into
the pool. Hinpoha reached Miss Snively first, just as the blue silk
appeared on the surface, and, evading her wildly clutching hand, managed
to hold her head above water while she struck out for the rail toward the
hands that were stretched down to her everywhere. Then she became aware
of another figure struggling at her side. Professor Knoblock had come up
after his plunge, struck out blindly and then suddenly doubled up and
gone down again. Thrusting Miss Snively hastily toward the helping hands,
Hinpoha turned and rescued her professor, who had miscalculated his leap
and struck his head on the side of the pool. The whole business had not
taken two minutes since the first alarm, but Hinpoha was the heroine of
the hour. She was cheered and praised and petted and patted on the head
and exclaimed over until she was quite bewildered. Her heart was thumping
until it deafened her. She had saved her lover's life, and, bashful as he
was, she knew that now he must speak. It would not happen tonight. They
had rushed him home in a taxicab. But tomorrow----
Somehow she managed to finish her part in the program and drink fruit
punch in the gymnasium afterward. While she stood in a corner cooling her
burning cheeks at an open window somebody came and stood beside her.
Hinpoha turned and faced the Captain, and listened absent-mindedly to his
words of praise. Then one sentence he said caught her attention. "Say,"
he said bashfully, "how did you like the flowers?"
"What flowers?" asked Hinpoha wonderingly.
"The roses--pink ones--I sent you when you had the mumps."
Hinpoha stared at him blankly, unbelievingly. No, no, it could not be
true, the roses had come from her light-haired professor. "Did _you_ send
them?" she asked in a tone in which no one could have detected any degree
of appreciation for the favor.
"Wasn't there any card in the box?" asked the Captain. "I gave one to Mr.
Forester to put in."
"No," answered Hinpoha, with a gulp, "there wasn't; and I
thought--somebody else sent them."
"Didn't you like them?" asked the Captain, feeling in the air that
something was wrong somewhere. "Don't you like roses?"
Hinpoha pulled herself together with an effort. Tears of disappointment
were standing in her eyes. "Ye-es," she answered politely, but without
enthusiasm, "they were lovely; perfectly lovely." And she ran hurriedly
out of the corner, leaving the Captain staring after her in bewilderment.
"I don't believe he sent them to me at all!" she told herself in the
solitude of her own room that night. "The horrid thing found out that I
got them and told me that just to tease me. Anyway, it doesn't make a
particle of difference about Professor Knoblock." And she fell asleep
whispering to herself with bated breath, "Tomorrow!"
She walked to school with lagging steps the next morning. Now that the
great hour was at hand she was filled with a desire to flee. Then she
heard footsteps behind her, and, glancing out of the corner of her eye,
saw the professor approaching. With a wildly beating heart she walked on,
her face straight to the front. He was coming. He was overtaking her. Now
he was upon her. With a great effort she turned her head to look at him,
her lips parted in a tremulous smile. Professor Knoblock raised his hat
stiffly, nodded frigidly and passed on without a word, leaving Hinpoha
staring after him stunned. Unseeingly she stumbled on to school. One
question was racing back and forth in her mind like a shuttle in a
loom--what was the meaning of it? Classes recited around her in school;
she heard them as in a dream. Professor Knoblock did not look at her as
she entered the Literature class room; he was taking two of the boys
sharply to task for never being able to recite. Hinpoha sat with her eyes
fixed on her book. Professor Knoblock was evidently ill-humored this
morning, though apparently none the worse for his mishap the evening
before. He was dealing out zero marks right and left if the recitations
did not go like clock-work. And as was only to be expected the morning
after such an elaborate affair as the dedication of a swimming pool,
clock-work recitations were very few and far between.
The professor finally lost all patience. "Take your books," he commanded,
"open and study the lesson the remainder of the hour, and the first one I
see dawdling or whispering will be sent back to the session room."
Hinpoha's eyes followed the lines on the page, but she could not have
told what she was reading. The question was still beating back and forth
in her mind.
"Lend me your pencil," whispered her neighbor. Mechanically she held it
out to him and when he took it he thrust a stick of gum into her hand. He
was still in a festive mood. Professor Knoblock caught the movement. At
the same moment another pair in the back of the room began giggling about
something.
"You two are out of order!" shouted the professor. "Leave the room!" All
eyes were turned toward the two in the back.
"I mean you, George Hancock, and you, Dorothy Bradford," said the
Professor severely. Hinpoha turned pleading, unbelieving eyes on him.
"Leave the room," he repeated with rising anger, "go back to your session
room!" And with the world rocking under her feet, Hinpoha went.
As the pupils came back from their respective classes that noon there was
a sensation in the air. Groups of girls stood around whispering to one
another and exclaiming. "Did you ever hear anything like it?" rose on all
sides. "Who would ever dream of her getting----"
Hinpoha, dumb and miserable, sat apart, until some one dragged her into
the center of a group. "Have you heard the news?"
"No," she answered dully.
"Miss Snively's engaged!" announced a young lady, in the same tone she
would have said: "The sky has fallen!"
"She is!" said Hinpoha. "To whom?"
"Professor Knoblock!" continued the speaker. "They've been engaged a long
time--but it just leaked out yesterday in a teachers' meeting. That's why
he came here to teach."
"But the notes he wrote me," moaned Hinpoha to the Winnebagos, who had
gathered for an indignation meeting that afternoon. "And the curl I gave
him---- Oh-oh-oh!" and she hid her face in her hands and groaned.
Katherine had been poking about in a corner of the room during the
preliminary wail. She now came forward carrying a box in her hand which
she laid on Hinpoha's knee.
"What's this?" asked Hinpoha.
"Open it and see," advised Katherine.
Hinpoha complied and there fell into her lap a long, curling, red ringlet
and a piece of paper written over in Hinpoha's hand.
"I have a confession to make," said Katherine, striking a dramatic
attitude. "I put that note into your book asking for the lock of hair,
and watched until you put it into the dictionary. Then I took it out
after you left the room. I wrote the notes that followed to keep the ball
rolling. I don't believe Professor Knoblock knows a thing about his great
romance with you."
"You did it!" cried Hinpoha blankly, turning fiercely upon Katherine.
"You made such a fool out of me that I'll never be able to show my face
again as long as I live. You--you----" sobs choked her and cut off all
utterance.
"But the flowers," gasped Gladys, "who sent them?"
"Captain did, the mean old thing!" sobbed Hinpoha.
"But the Key, and the Horoscope, and the Fortune Teller," continued
Gladys, "they all said he would be the one. I don't see how it could have
come out any other way."
Katherine rose from her knees and rapped on the table for attention.
"Girls," she said seriously, "I suppose you think it was a very unkind
and low-down sort of joke I played on Hinpoha, getting her all worked up
like that with those notes, and under ordinary circumstances it would
have been. But isn't there a saying somewhere 'that awfully sick people
need awfully strong medicine,' or something to that effect? Here you all
were gone completely loony--excuse the expression, but it's just what you
were--gone perfectly loony about this fortune-telling business. You did
it so much that I actually believe you began to think it was true. Then
that fool fortune-teller told Hinpoha about the light-haired man that was
coming into her life soon, and when the new professor arrived you all
thought he was the one. I just happened to find out soon after he came
that he was engaged to Miss Snively. I knew if I told you then you
wouldn't believe it, so I waited until it came out. But I was afraid
Hinpoha would do something really silly before she got through, and
decided to take a hand in the game myself. When I wrote that note about
the hair I was sure she would see through it and come to her senses. The
fact that she swallowed it shows how far out of her right mind she was. I
never believed she would put a lock of hair into the dictionary. But when
she seemed to take it all for gospel truth I couldn't resist the
temptation to go on and have some more fun."
"But--his handwriting," said Hinpoha faintly.
"Easiest thing in the world to imitate," said Katherine, saying nothing
about the weary hours it had taken her to accomplish that feat. "And I
signed my own initial, 'K.,' which was certainly not taking the
professor's name in vain. I never told a soul, so there's nobody to crow
over you. You stand just exactly where you did at first with the
professor."
"But," said Gladys, still not satisfied, "why did he always look at
Hinpoha when he read the sentimental passages?"
"Because he's built that way," answered Katherine scornfully. "There are
plenty of men who will make eyes at every pretty girl they see, whether
they have any right to or not. Besides I heard him tell one of the other
teachers once that your red hair reminded him of the hair that belonged
to a dear friend he 'lost in youth.'"
After hearing Katherine's clean-cut and sensible version of the affair
the whole thing seemed unutterably ridiculous and one by one they began
to think that she was right, and had played the part of the friend
instead of the mischief-maker, in shocking Hinpoha back into common
sense. Hinpoha advanced shakily and held out her hand. "I thank you,
Katherine," she said, "for 'saving me from myself'!" And Katherine seized
her hand in a crushing grip, and soon they were hugging each other, and
their friendship, instead of being shaken to its foundations, was
cemented more strongly.
"I think he's horrid," said Gladys, "and if I were you, Hinpoha, I'd
never look at him again--the way he treated you this morning, after you
had taken the trouble to fish him out of the pool last night. He's an
ungrateful wretch, and doesn't deserve to be rescued."
Katherine was looking at them with a queer expression. "There's something
else I suppose I ought to tell you," she said, "although I wasn't going
to at first. But now he's acted so you really ought to know. Miss
Snively's falling into the pool wasn't exactly an accident."
"Did he push her in?" asked Gladys in a horrified tone.
"Goodness, no," said Katherine. Then she added: "Yes, in a way he did,
too, for he was responsible for her falling in. You know what a dub the
boys all think him; they never call him anything but 'that mutt,' or
'that cissy.' He couldn't help seeing it, and it bothered him that he
wasn't a hero in their eyes. Besides," she continued shrewdly, "if he was
thinking of getting married he probably was looking for promotion, and he
never would get it as long as he couldn't control the boys. So he
complained to Miss Snively about it and she obligingly offered to fall
into the pool and have him rescue her, and so make a hero out of him
overnight. I heard them planning it yesterday; they were on one side of a
big pile of greens waiting to go up and I was on the other. She was to do
it during the intermission when no one was in the pool. They didn't seem
to know that you were going to be in then. But she did it anyway,
thinking that the professor would reach her first. But you were too quick
for them. That's why he's so furious with you; you kept him from being a
hero, and got all the praise he expected to get. Then when he bumped his
head on the side of the tank and had to be rescued himself, it put the
finishing touch to the tragedy."
"Gee!" exclaimed Hinpoha and Sahwah and Gladys and the other two girls,
all in a breath. In moments of great emotional stress refined language
seems an utter failure as a vehicle of expression. Slang is the only
thing that adequately expresses the feelings. They said it again,
intentionally and emphatically--"_Gee!_"
"What a foolish thing to do," said Sahwah, when they had all recovered
somewhat, "falling into the pool to give a man a chance to be a hero. She
might have been drowned."
"She didn't run such an awful risk," observed Katherine, the all-knowing.
"She's a good swimmer herself; I've heard people say so."
And again the girls sought relief in the expression not sanctioned by the
grammar.
"Going to the Lodge?" said the Captain's voice in Hinpoha's ear a few
days later, as she swung along the street. The Captain's manner was
decidedly diffident. He was not at all sure how she would treat him this
time.
Hinpoha nodded companionably. "I'm going to practice with the handball,"
she said energetically. "Come on, I'll race you across the field."
"That was great, wasn't it?" she cried laughingly, as she stopped before
the door, breathless, with her hair flying around her face.
"Say, give us a curl, will you?" begged the Captain, tugging at one that
hung over the collar of her coat.
"Don't be silly, Captain," she said reprovingly. "You know I hate people
who are sentimental."
Hinpoha's romance was a thing of the past.