“Never you mind,” Fran replied, as she did it up in thick paper, that the world might not “gaze thereon,” she said.
The girls, who were working busily, greeted it with shouts. “A prize, Fran,—where did you get it?”
“It was some present, girls, years ago, I believe. Mother gave it to me gladly; but won’t it be just the thing for the Sibyl to drop her wise sayings into? We might touch up the colors a little, or subdue them, just as you like, and with a little drapery it should stand near the kettle, perhaps.”
“These artistic ideas grow upon us,” laughed Bess. “Would your mother feel very bad if it were broken?”
“She’d scarcely shed tears of anguish, Bess.”
What with the different ideas, Orders of Witches, or Sibyls, and the restraint of various limiting circumstances, the girls were a little confused sometimes, but they kept steadily at one purpose, that of making a bright club room for the present and laying quiet plans for a summer of camping together. That idea grew from the first. They talked it over with Miss Haynes, who was pledged to secrecy. She thought that she would not be able to go with them, but the matter was left open. There was too much of school left before them to make final decisions or call the parents into conference.
Miss Haynes, however, gave the girls the benefit of her books as reference. They took the list of them. Each was going to persuade a parent to buy her one of those they needed at once. For the rest they would earn money in some way. It was not long, then, before upon a little cherry table, whose age and associations the girls scarcely appreciated, the Chapman Handbook of Birds, the Reed field books and the first magazines of Bird Lore had a prominent place. Judge Gordon said that as soon as he recovered from the expenses of having a club room in his house, he might be induced to help out with the S. P. library, and Jean told him that he was a funny daddy but nice.
But science was not the only interest. The Orders of Sibyls were duly started, as soon as the girls decided between sibyls and witches. As Billy one day enlarged upon the fun the boys had in initiations, and Jean duly repeated all he said, S. P. initiations began. These, after the manner of initiations, were entirely secret, though Judge and Mrs. Gordon often smiled at the squeals of surprised victims, or giggles of the other girls. Not even the president was exempt from initiation, but the girls promised to do things that were “really smart,” not silly tricks to hurt the girls. Nan and Jean were especially good at thinking up impressive ceremonies, with the Sibyls attired in mysterious robes, and Molly, as a minister’s daughter, was acquainted with so many different ways to entertain that the girls said they had only to ask Molly when they wanted a new “stunt.”
Mrs. Dudley sent over by Leigh a fine copy of Michael Angelo’s Cumaean Sibyl, which they hung in a place of honor upon the club room wall, and Jean hoped that some day she, too, might see the strange Last Judgment and the wonderful figures of prophets and other conceptions of the great artist and sculptor. Leigh was very simple about her advantages and did not seem to feel any superiority, as a girl of less character might have done, because she had seen the original paintings upon wall and ceiling. They made Leigh head of the department of travel and art, though she said that she really didn’t know anything about either. “I just saw what Mother and Father did,” said she, “and some of it I remember, and lots of it I don’t!”
Time went very rapidly until Jean said that they must get at their Attic Celebration if they were going to have any. Initiations took several lively meetings. Occasionally they had merely a fudge party in the club room, when ideas gave out, or they were tired of decorating and making posters to put up around the attic. As the migration of birds grew more interesting in April, they not only went with Miss Haynes, but had their own private hikes after school, or early in the mornings on Saturday, submitting their lists or their descriptions to her when she was not too busy. Sometimes she was able to take out her science classes, when they looked not only for birds but for everything else in Nature’s great laboratory.