“You can tell the other boys if you want to. I deserve it. There was a real club, though, by the time they heard of it. But I made you think that there had been one. It’s taken me a long time to bring myself to telling you, but I had to be straight with myself, anyway. Whatever happens, I’m going to stick to the straight up and down truth forever!”
Billy was a little embarrassed by Jean’s earnestness, but as Molly had once said, he was both level-headed and fair.
“So far as I’m concerned, it’s all right, Jean. You’ve fixed it up with your little conscience, so forget it. I don’t blame you, for I suppose I was blowing about our pin that I was showing you. I had to show somebody or ‘bust,’ I reckon. Jimmy’s taken a lot of that out of me this summer. Let’s draw a long breath and start in, Wizards and S. P.’s, to raise money for the new library. You’re great on thinking things up, Jean. Get up some good schemes and I’ll back you.”
“Thanks, Billy. It’s a great relief that you don’t think that so terrible. And speaking of schemes, Uncle Everett says that he will give a contribution to the S. P.’s for any cause they like. My cousin Ann writes to me, you know. They are not rich, but so happy. I’m to go there on my Christmas vacation and Ann is going to be an S. P. So are a lot of other girls if they will join us.”
But Billy was laughing over a thought of his own. “Think of all the names we boys made up for you, and all the time you were trying to fit something to S. P. and rousing our curiosity!”
“I’m sorry about that, Billy, but the S. P. mysteries are all over, though it is almost a pity. And our greatest find was Greta-Sybil-Ann. I’m not so sorry, after all that I started the S. P.’s. Even if Ann might have found her parents in her own way, she would never have known the ‘why,’ if it hadn’t been for Molly, and we hurried up the happy ending, or beginning, just by being on hand. My! You never can tell what’s going to happen when you start anything!”
THE END
FICTION
FOR
GIRLS
Oversized
Editions