But perhaps most of all they laughed at a series of drawings in crayon by Phoebe that illustrated the different names the S. P.’s had been called. She had been making them along for the fun of it without telling the girls; and when she brought them that last afternoon of their preparations for the Attic Party all proceedings were stopped for a little while the girls laughed over them until they were breathless. These were in outline and of cartoon style.
Here were the Strolling Pilgrims with field glasses and bulging pockets, bending forward to look at a long-legged bird that was wildly speeding away. Here were the Silly Peacocks before a mirror. The Stormy Petrels hovered above a huge wave and had human faces. The Swooping Pelicans were witches in that they wore peaked hats and had brooms tucked under their wings. The Snooping Puffins, a particularly opprobrious name, was illustrated by the outlines of a row of puffins sitting on a rock and looking fiercely at an angular Black Wizard whom a wave was about to engulf. Danny Pierce, whose brilliant mind had evolved that name for the S. P.’s had the grace to blush when his eye fell upon that picture. “Oh say, Phoebe, I didn’t mean anything by that! You know S. P. can mean almost anything.”
“So it can, Danny. We’ve discovered that by this time,” replied Phoebe with a mischievous look. “But we don’t mind. It’s been such fun. I did a dozen of these to surprise the girls, and when we decided to give a party I kept them till now.”
“You ought to study art, Phoebe, and do a lot with it, though how you can in this little town, I don’t know.”
Phoebe looked sober for a minute. “I’m aching to study, Danny, but I’ll just do what I can now. My father says it’s not where you live but what you do with it,—any little talent that you think you have, he meant. And lots of big people come from little towns, he says, because we get some things here,—well, things they study about in big books, we can just go out and see, easy as pie.”
“I wish I dared tell you what the Wizards are going to do this summer, Phoebe.”
“I wish I dared tell you what we girls want to do. Whether we’re going to be allowed to do it or not is another question.”
But Danny went on around the sides of the attic walls, seeing the Sour Persimmons hanging from a tree, mere faces with a round persimmon body and a collar of the persimmon type; the Sobbing Poetesses that wept into large bandannas; the Starchy Pedagogues that wore wide, stiff robes and carried diplomas under their arms, and the Sad Prunes, seven wrinkled faces, darkened and lying in a scoop such as is used in groceries.
Flattering names like Sugar Plums, Seraphic Peaches or Peris, and Sweet Partners, suggested by their elders, Phoebe had omitted, keeping only to the more ridiculous combinations possible.
“Yes,” said Jean, “we are going to open up the sanctum sanctorum, where we have our initiations and everything. To be sure, our secrets are locked away, but you may see the caldron where with incantations the sibyl,—but you will see that I can’t explain any more, of course. And as soon as you’ve seen the room you may have your fortunes told by the High Sibyl.”