As for Hinpoha herself, she was too transported to care what anyone else thought about it. She was surrounded by a rarified atmosphere and the voices of earth troubled her not. Just now she sat blushing deeply and crushing in her hand a note which had appeared mysteriously between the pages of her _Selections from the Standard English Poets_. It was written in Mr. Knoblock’s slanting backhand, and read:
“Never have I seen such glorious hair as yours. I cannot take my eyes from it while you are in the room, and it haunts me by night. May I ask a great favor of you—that you grant me one lock, one small lock, as a keepsake? I fear you will be too modest to make this gift in person, and all I ask is that you slip it into the dictionary on my desk.”
The signature was a long ornamental K, with a running vine entwined about its upright stroke.
Hinpoha scarcely raised her eyes above the level of her book during the whole recitation. She sat nervously toying with a long perfect curl that hung down over her shoulder. Toward the close of the recitation period she came out of her abstraction and touched the boy in front of her on the shoulder. “Lend me your penknife,” she whispered in answer to his look of inquiry. The Senior Literature Class occupied the last hour of the day, and as Mr. Knoblock had no session room, the passing of the class left the room empty. On this day Mr. Knoblock left the room with the class on the stroke of the bell, and the boys and girls, trooping out in a hurry to get home, did not notice that Hinpoha loitered. She glanced around nervously, satisfied herself that she was unobserved and then darted toward the dictionary on Mr. Knoblock’s desk. Going out of the door a minute later she ran violently into Katherine, who had carried out her inkwell instead of her English book, and was coming back to replace it. Katherine looked at her curiously.
“Excuse me,” said Hinpoha in a flustered tone, “I really didn’t see you. I was thinking about something.”
Hinpoha looked at Mr. Knoblock with an air of expectancy when she entered the room the next morning, looking for some sign of gratitude for the lock of hair, but he said, “Good morning, Miss Bradford,” in his usual tone and made no further remarks. But before the hour was over he took occasion to borrow her book for a moment, and directly after he returned it a note fell from its pages into her lap. With starry eyes she unfolded it and read: