“He’s in it, but the first I noticed was his new pin, this morning, though he may have been wearing it before, out of sight. When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Oh nothing. Bottle up your curiosity, Nan’!”
This called forth various comments on brothers and whether the boys’ club was a senior fraternity or not. Jean waited till the opportunity came.
“No, it can’t be a real fraternity,” said she, “for they aren’t allowed. Besides Billy Baxter belongs and he’s only a sophomore, like us. Nobody wants to know, of course, just what boys do; but this time they have gotten up some sort of a secret society and feel so snippy about it that we just ought to do something, too.”
“And be called ‘copy-cats’,” Nan suggested.
“Yes, that’s so,” acknowledged Jean. “But just wait a minute. Perhaps you won’t think that what I did was so terrible, then; for I thought of that, too. Billy, you know, comes home my way from school, and tonight he whistled and called ‘Je-an,’ and caught up with me. Well, in a minute I knew it wasn’t for anything else than to show me his new pin and crow over us girls a little. I didn’t know about Jimmy, of course, and there must be several sophomores in it, I’m sure. We’ll have to find out how big a crowd belongs.” A wide grin now almost obscured the dimple in Jean’s cheek.
“Girls, they call themselves ‘The Black Wizards’ and their pin is a most terrible lookin’ snake in a queer W! Billy was full of it, and by a few little innocent questions I got a lot of news! I wasn’t pretending either, when I told him that I was awfully interested, and that it must be fine and lots of fun. I imagine that they must have made it up to wear their pins,--they’d just come,--and not keep _everything_ to themselves any longer.
“So I said, ‘Why isn’t that _grand_,--just like us girls, only, only we haven’t such a scary sign as a snake, and our pins haven’t come yet!’” With this Jean looked around with an expression like that of the cat after it had eaten the canary.
“Oh, you whopper-teller!” cried Molly. “And did you say it after he told you they wouldn’t keep the fact of their having a club secret any longer?”
“Oh, no! I put that in just now. He just said that the boys had a new club, and told me the name and how they had lots of great plans and things like that. What I said wasn’t exactly untrue, for I formed a club of one member then and there, and I felt pretty sure that Nan would help me out, so I could say ‘girls,’--and Billy was gloating so!