The average school-girl loves mystery, and when Edna Tryon, who had become so intimate with the Friendly Five as almost to be their sixth, proposed to teach them a cipher by means of which they might communicate with no possibility of any other persons reading their letters they were ecstatic, and applied themselves with such zeal to practicing the new accomplishment that soon notes of the most enigmatical appearance were constantly exchanged between the initiated.

It was quite generally known that this secret correspondence existed, and much envy was excited by the obtrusive manner in which the experts triumphed in their accomplishment.

Often in the few moments after a class had come and the girls had taken their places a most innocent-looking note, not even folded, would pass through several hands and its contents glanced at by eyes whose greatest acuteness could see nothing but a confusion of letters; but after reaching one of the initiated she would express so much surprise or disdain or pleasure or other emotion after reading it by the light of her occult understanding of its secret that the other girls would pine to know its hidden and interesting meaning too.

Some of the girls tried to work out the cipher, but no one came so near it as Mary Ann, who was confessedly the most successful puzzle-solver in the school. She would undoubtedly in time have found it out alone, but she had some assistance from Katie, who, proud of her accomplishment, once read her a sentence of the secret message in a note she had received from Lily, and then had thrown it down upon her table according to the ostentatious habit of the league.

It may be stated here that the Friendly Five, in grateful acknowledgment of their debt to Edna Tryon, had admitted her to full companionship, and as the numerical name conflicted with the fact of a sixth member they had changed it to Secret Cipherers, using only the initials S. C.’s, which mysterious title caused much guessing among the outsiders, who rather ill-naturedly affected to believe the letters stood for “silly creatures,” and called the club by that uncomplimentary title. Mary Ann took the note to her room, and by the aid of the complete sentence she had heard soon worked out the cipher to her own satisfaction, as she had an early opportunity of proving; for the next note that was handed around and then thrown conspicuously down upon the floor contained, according to her key, a hidden appointment for a candy-pull in the wash-house, by gracious permission of the laundress.

A little quiet observation proved the correctness of her reading, and Mary Ann was so triumphant in her discovery that she felt like announcing it. But then, she reflected, it would spoil their sport; for they would fear her telling it to other girls. That, of course, she wouldn’t have done, but just for a moment she did have a desire to have Edna Tryon know that she had become possessed of her cherished secret. Then she recollected that others besides Edna would be discomposed, and remembering how kind they were to her generally—she had long ago forgiven Lily’s verses—she generously resolved to keep her own counsel, but was not above enjoying the idea that the boasted secret was no secret to her.

Whether or not it was right for her thus to read what was not intended for her eyes began to trouble her after a little; so one day when a note was thrown to her to pass to Edna, in one of the three-minute spells which they had in school at the end of every hour, when they were allowed to talk softly, but not to leave their seats, she whispered, after the latter had thrown it on the floor, “May I read it, cipher and all?”

“Make all you can out of it and welcome,” said Edna, loftily; and after that permission Mary Ann’s conscience was quieted.

All this time Mary Ann’s uncouth ways were fast disappearing, and her quick wit and good nature were fast winning friends for her, and her life at school was growing pleasanter. She never forgot her promise to watch over Elfie during Candace’s sick days, but she kept the secret so well that no one observed that she was especially watchful or suspected the need there was for such precautions.

As time wore on the Bellamy prize was often remembered. The conditions and circumstances attending it were fully understood by the new scholars, who felt that their chances were as good as any for obtaining it.

“There ought to be no doubt about one of us S. C.’s getting it,” said Edna Tryon, one day, in Lily’s room, “if it is managed fairly.” “It will be managed fairly if I know Mrs. Abbott as well as I think I do,” said Lily; “but why should it fall to the blissful lot of one of our select circle? See there, that’s a new interpretation of the mystic letters S. C.”

“O, that’s been thought of! Lottie Bush and Ellen Leigh asked me a month ago if that was what S. C. stood for.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it,” said Katie, “the different names the other girls have fitted to our letters? Something Curious, Sewing Circle, Screaming Crowd, Sorosis Children, Six Crows, Surly Crew, Sweet Creatures, etc., and not one has got it right yet.”

“Somebody’s sure to hit it right some day, and then we’ll have to change it,” said Lily.

“I wish they wouldn’t find it out,” said Bell. “It’s awful fun having letters instead of using the name outright as we did in Friendly Five.”

Edna took this as a personal compliment, as she was the suggester of the new name, and looked very proud and self-conscious.

“I’m glad you like it, girls,” she said. “There’s a good deal in a name, and I’m never at a loss to think of one. But to come back to the starting-point. The reason one of us ought to get the Bellamy prize is because there’s no one else in the school who is likely to excel us in any thing.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Lily. “We don’t know what the prize is for. May be it’s for patience; if that’s the case some of the smaller girls are just as patient as we are—more so, even. The same with amiability, or good nature, or any of the virtues.”

“Pshaw! That old gentleman wasn’t goody-goody enough to set up a prize for any such stuff,” said Edna. “He knows this isn’t a Sunday-school. No, it’s for superiority in something, I feel sure. May be it’s music, may be it’s languages, or some English studies. I wish I had been here then and heard him myself.”

“If it’s English studies Mary Ann Stubbs has the best chance,” said Lily. “She’s beyond the whole of us.”

“I don’t see,” said Edna, discontentedly, “why it is that common, second-class folks are ’most always so smart at books. May be it’s a sort of compensation for being low-born.”

“What is low-born?” asked Lily in an argumentative sort of way.

“Why, don’t you know? It’s common people.”

“Well, no, I don’t seem to know, in spite of your highly grammatical explanation.” “O, bother, how fussy you are! What difference does grammar make when one is just talking?” said Edna, irritably.

“My, what a superior person you are, to be able to soar above grammar that way, when I was so stupid as to suppose we couldn’t talk without it! But, to return to our mutton pies, as we say when mademoiselle calls us to the French class, what is low-born?”

“I don’t believe you are one half so stupid as you pretend; you know what it is as well as I do.”

“I ought to,” said Lily, thoughtfully; “but I had an idea you were referring to Marion, and she is distinctly high-born, as the peak which has the honor of being her birthplace is, to speak strictly within bounds, at least one trillion and fifteen feet above the level of the very tallest high-water mark.”

“I was referring to Mary Ann,” said Edna, angrily, “and she is a low, common thing, and you know it in spite of all the absurd nonsense you are saying about it. Can’t you see for yourself that she is just the opposite of all the rest of us?”

“Then you mean we are high, uncommon things? I am sure I’m greatly obliged to you, but somehow I don’t feel charmed at being described that way.”

The girls were all laughing, for Lily had a ridiculous, world-weary manner of uttering her tantalizing remarks that was extremely amusing, and Edna was losing her temper so fast that there might soon have been a disagreeable scene had not a pleasant interruption come in the form of a basket of the reddest and shiniest baldwins, with “Mammy Candace’s best compliments, and would the young ladies please accept the apples with her ’bligingest duty?”

It was beginning to be noticed all through the school that any special kindness or favor shown to Elfie was always recognized by the faithful black nurse, who invariably attempted to return it in some quaint, humble way, and the S. C.’s were quite accustomed to these touching thank-offerings.