“You’re going to be the President’s wife!” murmured Sahwah. “You won’t forget us, will you?”
“Never!” declared Hinpoha magnanimously, stealing a sly glance into the mirror.
“I hope you won’t be ashamed of me when I’m married and come calling at the White House,” said Katherine, rather dolefully. “All I drew was a farmer.”
“I only got an automobile manufacturer,” echoed Gladys.
“That’s what comes of having red hair,” said Sahwah enviously. “Her fortune said he would be drawn to her by her beautiful tresses.”
When Hinpoha was preparing for bed that night she stood fully an hour before the mirror and regarded her shining curls. Up until now she had never paid much attention to them except when the boys called her redhead and pretended to light matches on her head, and then she wished with all her heart, like the little girl in the song, that she had been “born a blonde.” Now for the first time her hair appeared beautiful to her. She arranged the curls this way and that, piling them on her head and letting them fall over her white shoulders. And all night she dreamed of standing up in a carriage and bowing graciously to cheering multitudes and clasping in her arms the forms of her girlhood friends who were among the crowd.
The horoscopes had their day and gave way to something still more exciting, something so secret that at first it could not be mentioned in words, but was only alluded to by mysterious references.
“Marjorie King went,” said Gladys to Hinpoha, “and she won’t tell a thing she found out, but she says it was the grandest thing.”
“I don’t believe it’s worth fifty cents,” said Sahwah skeptically. “Anyhow, I haven’t that much to spend.”
“You don’t ever dare tell anybody, they say, not a soul,” reported Gladys later. “If you do, the nice things won’t happen and the bad ones surely will.”