"I'll tell you what," suggested Marjorie. "Let's get up a secret society of our own. It would take the wind out of Renie's sails tremendously to find that we had passwords and signals and all the rest of it. She'd be most fearfully annoyed." "It's a good idea," assented Sylvia, "but what could we have a secret society about?" "Well, why not have it a sort of patriotic one, to do all we can to help the war, knit socks for the soldiers, and that kind of thing?" "We knit socks already," objected Betty. "That doesn't matter, we must knit more, that's all. There must be heaps of things we can do for the war. Besides, it's the spirit of the thing that counts. We pledge ourselves to give our last drop of blood for our country. We've all of us got fathers and brothers who are fighting." "Chrissie hasn't anybody at the front," demurred Betty, rather spitefully. "That's not Chrissie's fault. We're not all born with brothers. Because you're lucky enough to have an uncle who's an admiral, you needn't quite squash other people!" "How you fly out! I was only mentioning a fact." "Anybody with tact wouldn't have mentioned it." "What shall we call the society?" asked Sylvia, bringing the disputants back to the original subject of the discussion. "How would 'The Secret Society of Patriots' do?" suggested Chrissie. "The very thing!" assented Marjorie warmly. "Trust Chrissie to hit on the right name. We'll let just a few into it--Patricia, perhaps, and Enid and Mollie, but nobody else. We must take an oath, and regard it as absolutely binding." "Like the Freemasons," agreed Sylvia. "I believe they kill anybody who betrays them." "We'll have an initiation ceremony," purred Marjorie, highly delighted with the new venture. "And of course we'll arrange a password and signals, and I don't see why we shouldn't have a cryptogram, and write each other notes. It would be ever so baffling for the rest to find letters lying about that they couldn't read. They'd be most indignant." "Right you are! It'll be priceless! We'll do Irene this time!" The new society at once established itself upon lines of utmost secrecy. Its initiates found large satisfaction in playing it off against their rivals. Though they preserved its objects in a halo of mystery, they allowed just the initials of its name to leak out, so as to convince the hostel of its reality. Unfortunately they had not noticed that S.S.O.P. spells "sop", but the outside public eagerly seized at such an opportunity, and nicknamed them "the Milksops" on the spot. As they had expected, Irene and her satellites were highly affronted at an opposition society being started, and flung scorn at its members. "We mustn't mind them," urged Marjorie patiently. "It's really a compliment to us that they're so annoyed. We'll just go on our own way and take no notice. I've invented a beautiful cryptogram. They'll never guess it without the key, if they try for a year."