With this Jean was satisfied. In a whirl of cheery goodbyes the Gordon car took them all back to town and the train. “My,” said Jean, “doesn’t it seem lonesome without Sybil?”
“Yes,” Grace answered, “yet she was here only two weeks. Do you realize, girls, that the time I have to spend here is getting short?”
The vacation was flying, as Grace said, but when Grace felt that she must go back, there were several tired mothers that thought a short vacation would do them considerable good. They were welcomed as chaperons by the S. P.’s and not allowed to cook or lift anything but an admonishing finger. By this time, moreover, the S. P.’s could “really cook,” as Jean put it. The advent of the mothers, one by one, prolonged the camping until within a few weeks before school began; then the beloved cottage was dismantled and the caravan of campers returned. The boys had gone first, but some of them came back to help the girls pack up.
Billy persuaded Jean to ride on the truck which Jimmy drove, with Grace beside him. He fixed a safe perch and sat beside her to hear the latest, he said.
“Well, Billy, the latest is that we are really the Social Progress Club, announcing our name to everybody, and that we think the Sibyl Pixies a clever idea of you boys. The only thing secret will be our initiations; so that that mystery is over. But the great mystery of the S. P.’s was the one we didn’t expect at all, the one that made Ann Gordon out of Greta Klein! Sure enough, I did go up there to find a cousin. Suppose we hadn’t gone camping. Suppose we hadn’t had a S. P. Club!”
“You would have gone East with your father and mother, and Leigh would have gone somewhere with hers, and Molly—well, you would have been scattered.”
“And oh, Billy, I’ve something to confess to you. I’ve just dreaded doing it, but I have to, for the sake of my little conscience!” Then Jean started in to tell Billy all the details about how she started the S. P.’s. Fortunately, Billy did not take it as seriously as she feared, though she did not spare herself. He doubled over with mirth when she told him how she saw the S. P. on a sign as they passed.
“You can tell the other boys if you want to. I deserve it. There was a real club, though, by the time they heard of it. But I made you think that there had been one. It’s taken me a long time to bring myself to telling you, but I had to be straight with myself, anyway. Whatever happens, I’m going to stick to the straight up and down truth forever!”
Billy was a little embarrassed by Jean’s earnestness, but as Molly had once said, he was both level-headed and fair.
“So far as I’m concerned, it’s all right, Jean. You’ve fixed it up with your little conscience, so forget it. I don’t blame you, for I suppose I was blowing about our pin that I was showing you. I had to show somebody or ‘bust,’ I reckon. Jimmy’s taken a lot of that out of me this summer. Let’s draw a long breath and start in, Wizards and S. P.’s, to raise money for the new library. You’re great on thinking things up, Jean. Get up some good schemes and I’ll back you.”
“Thanks, Billy. It’s a great relief that you don’t think that so terrible. And speaking of schemes, Uncle Everett says that he will give a contribution to the S. P.’s for any cause they like. My cousin Ann writes to me, you know. They are not rich, but so happy. I’m to go there on my Christmas vacation and Ann is going to be an S. P. So are a lot of other girls if they will join us.”
But Billy was laughing over a thought of his own. “Think of all the names we boys made up for you, and all the time you were trying to fit something to S. P. and rousing our curiosity!”
“I’m sorry about that, Billy, but the S. P. mysteries are all over, though it is almost a pity. And our greatest find was Greta-Sybil-Ann. I’m not so sorry, after all that I started the S. P.’s. Even if Ann might have found her parents in her own way, she would never have known the ‘why,’ if it hadn’t been for Molly, and we hurried up the happy ending, or beginning, just by being on hand. My! You never can tell what’s going to happen when you start anything!”
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The Third Girl Detective Page 115