Like so many butterflies settling after uncertain movements, Jean’s guests turned from the closer proximity to the fire and took seats. Four of them bounced on the cushion-covered springs of the big davenport that was placed at an angle where the cozy warmth of the fire reached them. Leigh sank into a big over-stuffed chair. Nan perched on its arm, as she happened to be near with the plate of fudge, just passed again. Jean, now thinking thoughts of new presidents or promoters of clubs, stood with her hand on one end of the mantel and surveyed the girls with a smile half embarrassed.
“What’s the great excitement, Jean?” asked practical Molly, tossing back a flaxen bob and leaning forward on the davenport, with her hands around one knee. “What scheme have you and Nan gotten up now?”
Blue eyes and brown eyes exchanged an amused look, though Jean grew rather sober, while Nan spoke up. “I haven’t a thing to do with this one, except to stand by Jean. She’ll explain.”
“All right. Explain and satisfy our curiosity, Jean, or else forever after hold your peace!”
“There must have been a wedding at the parsonage, girls,” suggested Fran. “Were you a witness, Molly?”
“Not this time. Go on, Jean, and tell. I have to get home early and help get supper.”
“All right, Molly. I’m just thinking it out. This is a ‘S. O. S.’ call girls, and if you don’t help me out, I’m disgraced for life, I guess.”
“It is _very_ serious,” remarked Nan, with mock soberness and an air as important as she could manage while still holding the fudge plate, sadly depleted.
Jean now drew up a straight chair and sat down, facing the others from the other corner of the mantel. Then she began, soberly at first, but frequently displaying her pretty dimple in smiles, chuckles and even grins as her story proceeded.
“It’s this way, girls. We just--simply--have to have a club, and I don’t mean an ordinary club or society, but something different, a _secret_ club!”
“Sakes!” exclaimed Molly, “something like Grace’s sorority at college?”
“No. That wouldn’t be any fun for us. Well, perhaps. But have you noticed how mysterious some of the boys have been lately?”
Several girls said that they had not seen anything unusual. Leigh remarked that she never paid any attention to what they did, except at parties. But Molly remembered that when they were skating recently “a knot of the boys” drew together, talking about something and that when she and Bess happened to skate near them, to avoid a rough place in the ice, “the bunch” broke up and skated apart.