Gladys shook her head. “I saw him dancing once or twice with Miss Snively,” she said. “I don’t believe he stayed very long. He disappeared before it was half over.”
Hinpoha was satisfied. He had not enjoyed himself without her. “Wasn’t it noble of him to dance with Miss Snively?” she said enthusiastically. “No one else would, I’m sure.”
At Commencement time the year before an old Washington High graduate, who had attained fame and fortune since his school days, presented the school with funds to build a swimming pool. Work had progressed during the year and now the pool was completed and about to be dedicated. An elaborate pageant was being prepared for the occasion. Mermaids and water nymphs were to gambol about in the green, glassy depths and lie on the painted coral reefs; Neptune was to rise from the deep with his trident; a garland bedecked barge was to bear a queen and her attendants; and then after the pageant there were to be swimming races, an exhibition of diving and then a stunt contest.
The Winnebagos, being experienced swimmers, were very much in the show. Sahwah had invented a brand new and difficult dive, which she had christened Mammy Moon; Hinpoha had learned the amazing trick of sitting down in the water and clasping her hands around her knees; Gladys could swim the entire length of the pool with the leg stroke only, holding a parasol over her head with her hands, thus giving the impression that she was taking a stroll on a sunshiny day. Katherine, alas, could not swim. The largest body of water she had seen at home had been the cistern, and most of the time it was low tide in that. But this did not prevent her from thinking up new and ludicrous stunts for the others to do. It was she who invented the “Kite-tail” stunt, which was one of the signal successes on the night of the pageant. In this one of the senior boys, who was a very powerful swimmer, swam ahead with a rope tied around his waist, to which another performer clung. Behind this second one four or five more boys were strung out like the tail of a kite, each one holding on to the heels of the one ahead, and all towed by the first swimmer.
The great night arrived and the building which housed the pool was crowded to the doors. The Senior girls and boys had spent hours decorating the hall with festoons of greens and potted palms and ferns, so that it looked like the depths of a forest in the center of which the pool glittered like a magic spring. Cries of admiration rose from the audience all around. Hinpoha, who in the first part of the performance was a mermaid, with water lilies plaited in her shining hair, saw only one face in the crowd, and that was Professor Knoblock, as he leaned over the polished brass rail and looked at her, and looked, and looked, and looked. Only that day Hinpoha, filled with the spirit of romance, had slipped a note into the dictionary on his desk, at the beginning of the letter “L,” the place where she had put the lock of hair, thanking Professor Knoblock for the flowers. An hour later, in sudden terror that he would not find it there and someone else would, she had gone to remove it. But it had vanished, and in its place was another verse from Gareth and Lynette:
“O birds that warble to the morning sky,
O birds that warble as the day goes by,
Sing sweetly; twice my love hath smiled on me.”
The opening of the pool was a success in every way. The nymphs nymphed, and the mermaids wagged their spangled tails to the delight and wonder of the spectators, and the royal barge swept up and down to the strains of stately music. Then the pageant retired, the islands folded up their tents and vanished, and the swimmers went behind the scenes to prepare for the races and the stunts. To bridge over this interval, Hinpoha had been left in the pool all alone to amuse the crowd by floating on a barrel and trying to balance a tray on her head as she bobbed up and down. The crowd shouted with laughter and cheered her wildly. All but one. With arms crossed triumphantly over her breast and tray steady on her head, Hinpoha looked up to see Miss Snively standing by the edge regarding her with a coldly sarcastic expression. It was as if she said in words, “Only such a flathead as you could balance a tray on it.” But the great happiness that surged inside of Hinpoha made her charitable and forgiving toward all the world, and she sent a sweet and friendly smile into Miss Snively’s face. But that marble-hearted lady looked away. The next minute there was a slip, a shriek, the flash of a silk dress, and a splash, and Miss Snively had disappeared beneath the surface at the deep end of the pool. Hurling the tray into space Hinpoha made a magnificent plunge for distance toward the spot where Miss Snively had gone down. Simultaneously with her plunge there was another movement in the crowd, and Professor Knoblock, stripping off his coat, jumped over the rail into the pool. Hinpoha reached Miss Snively first, just as the blue silk appeared on the surface, and, evading her wildly clutching hand, managed to hold her head above water while she struck out for the rail toward the hands that were stretched down to her everywhere. Then she became aware of another figure struggling at her side. Professor Knoblock had come up after his plunge, struck out blindly and then suddenly doubled up and gone down again. Thrusting Miss Snively hastily toward the helping hands, Hinpoha turned and rescued her professor, who had miscalculated his leap and struck his head on the side of the pool. The whole business had not taken two minutes since the first alarm, but Hinpoha was the heroine of the hour. She was cheered and praised and petted and patted on the head and exclaimed over until she was quite bewildered. Her heart was thumping until it deafened her. She had saved her lover’s life, and, bashful as he was, she knew that now he must speak. It would not happen tonight. They had rushed him home in a taxicab. But tomorrow——
Somehow she managed to finish her part in the program and drink fruit punch in the gymnasium afterward. While she stood in a corner cooling her burning cheeks at an open window somebody came and stood beside her. Hinpoha turned and faced the Captain, and listened absent-mindedly to his words of praise. Then one sentence he said caught her attention. “Say,” he said bashfully, “how did you like the flowers?”