The horoscopes had their day and gave way to something still more exciting, something so secret that at first it could not be mentioned in words, but was only alluded to by mysterious references.
“Marjorie King went,” said Gladys to Hinpoha, “and she won’t tell a thing she found out, but she says it was the grandest thing.”
“I don’t believe it’s worth fifty cents,” said Sahwah skeptically. “Anyhow, I haven’t that much to spend.”
“You don’t ever dare tell anybody, they say, not a soul,” reported Gladys later. “If you do, the nice things won’t happen and the bad ones surely will.”
“She’s the Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter,” observed Hinpoha in an awe-stricken tone. “Did you ever hear of anything so wonderful?”
“Are _you_?” asked Sahwah anxiously, of Hinpoha.
This last question was entirely unrelated to the preceding statement concerning the Seventh Daughter of a Seventh Daughter. It was part of the cryptic jargon employed in the discussion of a momentous question.
“I don’t know,” answered Hinpoha uncertainly. “Would you?”
“Oh, do,” begged Gladys, “and then if you find out something nice we’ll go in after you. Oh, I forgot, you can’t tell us anything.”
“Would your mother mind if you did?” asked Hinpoha, hesitating on the brink.
“She really wouldn’t mind, but she’d think it awfully silly,” answered Gladys, “so I don’t believe I’ll tell her.”
“You might find out the whole name,” said Sahwah, looking at Hinpoha.
“And just when it’s going to happen,” finished Gladys.
Hinpoha suddenly made up her mind. “I believe I will,” she said, looking at Sahwah.
Where Hinpoha’s thoughts were the next day in school nobody knew, but they were certainly not on her lessons. She failed signally in every class.
“And what were the initials of the great poet, Longfellow?” cooed Miss Snively, in her honeydrip voice.
The word “initials” penetrated Hinpoha’s wandering mind. “D. K.,” she murmured dreamily.
“Indeed?” purred Miss Snively. “Can it be that I have been misinformed?” But today sarcasm was lost on Hinpoha.
After school was out a select group, half of which seemed to be hanging back and being coaxed on by the other half, walked ten blocks to an unfamiliar car line and transferred to a cross-town line. There was a much more direct route to their destination, but that laid them open to the risk of meeting friends and relatives who might casually inquire whither they were bound. Just wherein lay the crime in what they were doing, no one could have told, nor why it should be kept such a dark secret, but singly and collectively they would have died rather than reveal the nature of the latest epidemic.