[CHAPTER II]
SEVEN S. P.’S
Jean now drew up a straight chair and sat down, facing the others from the other corner of the mantel. Then she began, soberly at first, but frequently displaying her pretty dimple in smiles, chuckles and even grins as her story proceeded.
“It’s this way, girls. We just—simply—have to have a club, and I don’t mean an ordinary club or society, but something different, a secret club!”
“Sakes!” exclaimed Molly, “something like Grace’s sorority at college?”
“No. That wouldn’t be any fun for us. Well, perhaps. But have you noticed how mysterious some of the boys have been lately?”
Several girls said that they had not seen anything unusual. Leigh remarked that she never paid any attention to what they did, except at parties. But Molly remembered that when they were skating recently “a knot of the boys” drew together, talking about something and that when she and Bess happened to skate near them, to avoid a rough place in the ice, “the bunch” broke up and skated apart.
“How about Jimmy, Nan?” asked Molly.
“He’s in it, but the first I noticed was his new pin, this morning, though he may have been wearing it before, out of sight. When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Oh nothing. Bottle up your curiosity, Nan’!”
This called forth various comments on brothers and whether the boys’ club was a senior fraternity or not. Jean waited till the opportunity came.
“No, it can’t be a real fraternity,” said she, “for they aren’t allowed. Besides Billy Baxter belongs and he’s only a sophomore, like us. Nobody wants to know, of course, just what boys do; but this time they have gotten up some sort of a secret society and feel so snippy about it that we just ought to do something, too.”