The girls agreed that Bess’s suggestions were good. Bess, Fran and Phoebe were appointed a committee on what the club should do, and every one was to consider herself a committee to determine what S. P. should represent. “S. could stand for Sophomore,” Molly suggested. Molly had begged off from any office, as she had so many church organizations to help.
“Sophomore is too common, Molly,” said Phoebe. “There are exactly seven of us, too, and seven is a lucky number. But I think that we can tell better after we think up what would be fun to do. Could we see the attic, Jean?”
“Yes. I’ll ask Mother, though, first. And don’t you think that we are enough right now, or would you rather ask more girls at once?”
For several minutes the girls talked that matter over, finally concluding that for the present, though they had many other friends, it would be better to keep the number as it stood. The sophomore class was not large. If they wanted to mix the group, as the boys were doing, there would be time enough. As Jean well knew, these were the leading girls of her class.
She slipped out to consult her mother, who gave permission at once for the girls to visit the attic and “view the landscape o’er,” as Molly said. Mrs. Gordon came into the living room to meet the girls and advised them to wear their coats into the cold regions and to look out for dust. “We do not dust the attic every day,” she added, with a smile like Jean’s.
The seven S. P.’s accordingly trooped up the two flights of stairs to the attic, or third floor. As they rounded the post at the top of an enclosed stairway, they found themselves in a large space dimly lighted by one window at the head of the stairs. The whole attic, to the farthermost corners, stretched before them. Dusty, shrouded shapes stood here and there. A great chimney went up through the middle, showing some of the sooty dust that had also sprinkled down from somewhere upon draped furniture or old trunks. Jean warned the girls again about dust, but no one cared.
At the front of this third floor a gable and a room of good height had been finished, separated by partitions and a door from the rest of the “attic.” The door was not far from the stairs and Jean explained that her father intended to make a hall there some day, shutting off the unfinished part by another partition and door. “But there’s no use in doing it, Mother says, for we’ll never need to use this room, and that’s why it will be just the thing for us. I suppose we can use the whole attic if we want to. We could have a lovely party up here some day. And I never even thought of it before!”
“Before your necessity became the ‘mother of invention,’ Jean.”
“That’s so, and ‘one thing leads to another’!”
Keen young eyes surveyed the proposed club room and found possibilities. A covered couch ran along one wall. Several good pieces of furniture stood about. The room was about fifteen feet in one direction, though it would have been hard to give its actual dimensions, so broken up was it into nooks and corners. Jean threw open the door of an immense closet and explained that the house had once been a big country house and that this room had been occupied by two maids.