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——