The second degree, it was whispered about among the girls, was bound to be a “hummer.”

“They say it’s a test of your character,” said Bobby, with a shiver.  “Somehow, Betty, my character oozes out of my shoes when it knows it should be prancing up to the firing line.”

“I guess you imagine that,” smiled Betty.  “Speak sternly to it, Bobby, and explain that funking is out of the question.”

However, more girls than Bobby found it necessary to clutch at their oozing courage when, upon assembling in the large hall, the lights suddenly went out.  In the shadows, four white veiled figures were seen slowly to mount the platform.

“To-night,” said one of them, stretching out a long arm and pointing toward the fascinated and expectant audience, “we are your fates!  You have come to the final tests.  We have no choice in these tests, nor have you.  You are to come forward, one at a time, and take a slip from this basket here on the table.  Go directly to your room after drawing your slip, and there open it and follow the directions explicitly.  Come to the platform in the order in which you are seated, please.”

The lights did not come on, and one by one the girls stumbled up the steps to the platform, felt around in the basket, and drew a slip.  Then they hurried away to their rooms to see what was to happen next.

Bobby and Betty could hardly wait to open their notes, and before they had them fairly digested, Frances and Libbie and Constance and Louise and the Guerin girls were crowding in to compare notes.

“I have to go and ask Miss Prettyman if I may telephone to Salsette Academy and ask for a lost-and-found notice on their bulletin board,” wailed Bobby.  “I’m supposed to have lost a pair of gloves at the last football game.  I always have the worst luck!  Can’t you imagine how Miss Prettyman will lecture me?  She’ll say that at my age I ought to have something in my head besides excuses to talk to the boys!”

The girls laughed, recognizing the ring of prophecy in Bobby’s speech.

“That’s nothing—­I’m to row Dora Estabrooke twice around the lake,” mourned Louise.  “She weighs two hundred, if she weighs a pound.  Thank goodness, I don’t have to do it to-night.”

Norma was instructed to walk three times around the cellar, chanting “Little Boy Blue” before ten o’clock that night.  Frances Martin, to her horror, was enjoined to produce six live angle worms the following morning—­“and you know I despise the wiggling things,” she wailed.  Alice Guerin, the silent member of the octette, was condemned to recite “The Children’s Hour” in the dining room “between cereal and eggs.”  And Constance Howard was told she must add up an unbelievably long column of figures and present the correct answer within half an hour.  Constance’s bete noir was figures, and already these long columns danced dizzily before her eyes.

“You needn’t tell me that chance made such canny selections,” observed Betty.  “One of those girls manipulated the right notes into our hands.  Libbie, what does yours say?”