“No, indeed,” replied Edna, loftily; “but I should like to have my fortune told by the sphinx.”
“Auntie Abbott says the spazinx in that picture isn’t a real spazinx,” said Elfie, consolingly.
They all laughed so at her remarkable pronunciation that her small head was tossed up with much dignity, and she said, with some asperity:
“It is not a bit ladified for folks to laugh at other folks’s pronouncements. My Marion never laughs when I says my words wrong.”
Edna repressed the sneering remark she was ready to utter, for no one was allowed to say one word in dispraise of Marion before Elfie, who had been more than ever her champion since the affair of the poem. And Edna, to do her justice, was really very fond of Elfie, and immediately tried to propitiate her by making a boat out of writing-paper, which the happy child carried off to sail in her basin. There she left it, with a freight of small paper dolls, when Candace called her to go out for a walk, and Marion, whose early training made tidiness a habit, carefully threw away the water, wiped out the basin, put the paper boat in the window to dry, and, picking up a work-basket, sat down with it in her lap and began to darn a stocking of Elfie’s as a pleasant surprise for Candace.
As she worked, saying over a list of Roman emperors to make sure she had them at her tongue’s end, some of the blurred characters in the little boat caught her attention, and she carefully unfolded it, finding, as she suspected, that it was a note written in cipher. Having had permission to read all she could, she amused herself by deciphering the curious words and writing them down on a bit of paper.
A part of the note was torn, but enough was left to make Marion very uncomfortable. It was written to Edna by Addie Mason, a rather delicate girl who lived in the village, and who came in to school every day for only two or three studies. She had become very popular with the S. C.’s and had been frequently invited to their secret meetings, and the mysterious cipher had been explained to her. She was immensely flattered by all this privilege, although she knew her admittance to fellowship was owing to her usefulness in bringing purchases of maple-sugar, candy, crackers, and raisins, and other such commodities as could be purchased at the country store, which the girls were not allowed to visit except by especial permission, and that was rarely accorded.
The cipher letter, after Marion copied it upon a fresh piece of paper, read thus:
“Drdn: mdmbltt syssh wllnt cmt thbck gtnlss ywll brnglf tsh syssh cnfnd smbrd mnyby pttngdvnng rdn blndchlds hndtht swht shs wntdfr. gthr wyfrm mrnnd cndcnd brnghr lngn nwll vrknw.
“Ddmsn.”
It was not a difficult cipher to read when you knew how—simply a leaving out of all the vowels and writing every consecutive pair of words together. But, as some of the girls who had tried to read specimens of it said, “it looked too heathenish for United States folks to read.” Abolishing capitals also added to its obscurity.