CHAPTER XI.
THE S. C.’S.
The average school-girl loves mystery, and when Edna Tryon, who had become so intimate with the Friendly Five as almost to be their sixth, proposed to teach them a cipher by means of which they might communicate with no possibility of any other persons reading their letters they were ecstatic, and applied themselves with such zeal to practicing the new accomplishment that soon notes of the most enigmatical appearance were constantly exchanged between the initiated.
It was quite generally known that this secret correspondence existed, and much envy was excited by the obtrusive manner in which the experts triumphed in their accomplishment.
Often in the few moments after a class had come and the girls had taken their places a most innocent-looking note, not even folded, would pass through several hands and its contents glanced at by eyes whose greatest acuteness could see nothing but a confusion of letters; but after reaching one of the initiated she would express so much surprise or disdain or pleasure or other emotion after reading it by the light of her occult understanding of its secret that the other girls would pine to know its hidden and interesting meaning too.
Some of the girls tried to work out the cipher, but no one came so near it as Mary Ann, who was confessedly the most successful puzzle-solver in the school. She would undoubtedly in time have found it out alone, but she had some assistance from Katie, who, proud of her accomplishment, once read her a sentence of the secret message in a note she had received from Lily, and then had thrown it down upon her table according to the ostentatious habit of the league.
It may be stated here that the Friendly Five, in grateful acknowledgment of their debt to Edna Tryon, had admitted her to full companionship, and as the numerical name conflicted with the fact of a sixth member they had changed it to Secret Cipherers, using only the initials S. C.’s, which mysterious title caused much guessing among the outsiders, who rather ill-naturedly affected to believe the letters stood for “silly creatures,” and called the club by that uncomplimentary title.
Mary Ann took the note to her room, and by the aid of the complete sentence she had heard soon worked out the cipher to her own satisfaction, as she had an early opportunity of proving; for the next note that was handed around and then thrown conspicuously down upon the floor contained, according to her key, a hidden appointment for a candy-pull in the wash-house, by gracious permission of the laundress.
A little quiet observation proved the correctness of her reading, and Mary Ann was so triumphant in her discovery that she felt like announcing it. But then, she reflected, it would spoil their sport; for they would fear her telling it to other girls. That, of course, she wouldn’t have done, but just for a moment she did have a desire to have Edna Tryon know that she had become possessed of her cherished secret. Then she recollected that others besides Edna would be discomposed, and remembering how kind they were to her generally—she had long ago forgiven Lily’s verses—she generously resolved to keep her own counsel, but was not above enjoying the idea that the boasted secret was no secret to her.
Whether or not it was right for her thus to read what was not intended for her eyes began to trouble her after a little; so one day when a note was thrown to her to pass to Edna, in one of the three-minute spells which they had in school at the end of every hour, when they were allowed to talk softly, but not to leave their seats, she whispered, after the latter had thrown it on the floor, “May I read it, cipher and all?”