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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s room they were greeted by the sight of the new teacher standing beside the desk.
"Boys and girls," said the princ.i.p.al, who was doing the honors, "this is Mr. David k.n.o.block, who will have charge of this cla.s.s in the future."
And he hurried out.
"David k.n.o.block!" whispered the wit of the cla.s.s to his neighbor.
"k.n.o.block, No Block, see?" And a t.i.tter ran through the cla.s.s.
"David k.n.o.block!" said Katherine to herself. "He looks as though his name might be Percy Pimpernell."
"David k.n.o.block!" repeated Hinpoha to herself, and sat mute before the workings of fate. David k.n.o.block. D. K. The Car of Destiny had stopped before her door and from it had alighted the fair-haired stranger!
Standing before the cla.s.s in the glory of his yellow hair, pale, sprouting mustache, blue eyes and pink cheeks, Mr. k.n.o.block 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 cla.s.s been reading, Miss-ah-Miss Katherine?" he inquired, consulting the cla.s.s roll.
"Tennyson, Mr. k.n.o.block," answered Katherine briefly.
"_Professor_ k.n.o.block, 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 pa.s.sage in the book Professor k.n.o.block looked at Hinpoha and at her alone. He often detained her a moment after cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, who had made eyes at the new Lochinvar in vain, made sneering remarks about a girl who had so few boy friends in the cla.s.s 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. k.n.o.block"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 Cla.s.s occupied the last hour of the day, and as Mr. k.n.o.block had no session room, the pa.s.sing of the cla.s.s left the room empty. On this day Mr. k.n.o.block left the room with the cla.s.s 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 un.o.bserved and then darted toward the dictionary on Mr. k.n.o.block"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 fl.u.s.tered tone, "I really didn"t see you.
I was thinking about something."
Hinpoha looked at Mr. k.n.o.block with an air of expectancy when she entered the room the next morning, looking for some sign of grat.i.tude 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 k.n.o.block 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 pa.s.sion 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.
"h.e.l.lo, 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."
"h.e.l.lo, Captain," she said sweetly. (How young he was, she was thinking.
How hopelessly kiddish beside the manly form of Professor k.n.o.block!)
"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 cla.s.s, 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 k.n.o.block 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 hoa.r.s.ely, "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."