"And when you are President, every one will know just how good and great you are, and they won't call you awkward nor—nor homely any more, will they?"
A flush and a chuckle marked John's reception of this query, after which he observed hastily and a bit apprehensively:
"Say, you wet little goldfishes! Remember that you are never, never, now or any time, howsoever odd I bear myself, to breathe a word to anybody, not to a single soul, not to your mamma or your papa or your Sunday-school teacher or anybody, of all these nice little play secrets which we have between ourselves."
An instant seriousness came over the children's faces.
"Cross my heart," murmured Tayna, with a twitch of her slender finger across her breast.
"And hope to die," added Dick, with a funeral solemnity, as he completed Tayna's cross by a vertical movement of a stubby thumb in the direction of his own wishbone of a breast.
Hampstead looked relieved.
"But," affirmed Tayna stoutly, "they are not play secrets. They are real secrets. Aren't they?"
John looked up at his motto again.
"Yes," he said in a low, determined voice. "They are real secrets."