"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 n.o.ble 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, gla.s.sy 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 k.n.o.block, as he leaned over the polished bra.s.s 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 k.n.o.block 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 s.p.a.ce 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 k.n.o.block, 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 k.n.o.block 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 k.n.o.block." 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 k.n.o.block raised his hat stiffly, nodded frigidly and pa.s.sed 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? Cla.s.ses recited around her in school; she heard them as in a dream. Professor k.n.o.block did not look at her as she entered the Literature cla.s.s 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 k.n.o.block 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 k.n.o.block 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 Hanc.o.c.k, 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 cla.s.ses 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 k.n.o.block!" 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 att.i.tude. "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 k.n.o.block 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?"