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 w