“But—his handwriting,” said Hinpoha faintly.
“Easiest thing in the world to imitate,” said Katherine, saying nothing about the weary hours it had taken her to accomplish that feat. “And I signed my own initial, ‘K.,’ which was certainly not taking the professor’s name in vain. I never told a soul, so there’s nobody to crow over you. You stand just exactly where you did at first with the professor.”
“But,” said Gladys, still not satisfied, “why did he always look at Hinpoha when he read the sentimental passages?”
“Because he’s built that way,” answered Katherine scornfully. “There are plenty of men who will make eyes at every pretty girl they see, whether they have any right to or not. Besides I heard him tell one of the other teachers once that your red hair reminded him of the hair that belonged to a dear friend he ‘lost in youth.’”
After hearing Katherine’s clean-cut and sensible version of the affair the whole thing seemed unutterably ridiculous and one by one they began to think that she was right, and had played the part of the friend instead of the mischief-maker, in shocking Hinpoha back into common sense. Hinpoha advanced shakily and held out her hand. “I thank you, Katherine,” she said, “for ‘saving me from myself’!” And Katherine seized her hand in a crushing grip, and soon they were hugging each other, and their friendship, instead of being shaken to its foundations, was cemented more strongly.
“I think he’s horrid,” said Gladys, “and if I were you, Hinpoha, I’d never look at him again—the way he treated you this morning, after you had taken the trouble to fish him out of the pool last night. He’s an ungrateful wretch, and doesn’t deserve to be rescued.”
Katherine was looking at them with a queer expression. “There’s something else I suppose I ought to tell you,” she said, “although I wasn’t going to at first. But now he’s acted so you really ought to know. Miss Snively’s falling into the pool wasn’t exactly an accident.”
“Did he push her in?” asked Gladys in a horrified tone.
“Goodness, no,” said Katherine. Then she added: “Yes, in a way he did, too, for he was responsible for her falling in. You know what a dub the boys all think him; they never call him anything but ‘that mutt,’ or ‘that cissy.’ He couldn’t help seeing it, and it bothered him that he wasn’t a hero in their eyes. Besides,” she continued shrewdly, “if he was thinking of getting married he probably was looking for promotion, and he never would get it as long as he couldn’t control the boys. So he complained to Miss Snively about it and she obligingly offered to fall into the pool and have him rescue her, and so make a hero out of him overnight. I heard them planning it yesterday; they were on one side of a big pile of greens waiting to go up and I was on the other. She was to do it during the intermission when no one was in the pool. They didn’t seem to know that you were going to be in then. But she did it anyway, thinking that the professor would reach her first. But you were too quick for them. That’s why he’s so furious with you; you kept him from being a hero, and got all the praise he expected to get. Then when he bumped his head on the side of the tank and had to be rescued himself, it put the finishing touch to the tragedy.”
“Gee!” exclaimed Hinpoha and Sahwah and Gladys and the other two girls, all in a breath. In moments of great emotional stress refined language seems an utter failure as a vehicle of expression. Slang is the only thing that adequately expresses the feelings. They said it again, intentionally and emphatically—“Gee!”