Gyp scorned the thought--part with their precious secret--let everybody know that that imposing portrait of George Washington hid a _secret door_? Why, even mother and Uncle Johnny couldn't know it--it was their very own secret! "I should say _not_. At least----" she added, "not for awhile. I guess I'm a Westley and I have a right to come up here." Which argument sounded very convincing to Jerry. "Oh, I have the grandest idea," Gyp dragged Jerry to the faded window-seat and plumped down upon it so hard that it sent a little cloud of dust about them. "Let's get up a secret society--like the horrid old Sphinxes." Fraternities and sororities were not allowed in Lincoln School, but from time to time there had sprung up secret bands of boys and girls, that held together by irrevealable ties for a little while, then passed into school history. One of these was the Sphinxes. They were annoyingly mysterious and dark rumors were current that their antics, if known, would not meet, in the least, the approval of the Lincoln faculty. Isobel was a Sphinx, most faithful to her vows, so that all the teasing and bribing that Graham's and Gyp's fertile brains could contrive, failed to drag one tiny truth from her. Of course Jerry had been at Lincoln long enough to know all about the Sphinxes. And she knew, too, that Gyp meant to suggest a society that would be like the Sphinxes only in that it was secret. She could not be one of that Third Form study-room without sharing the general scorn of the Sophomores for the Senior Sphinxes. "We can meet up here, you see--once a week. And let's have it a secret society that'll stand ready to serve Lincoln with their very lives--like those secret bands of men in the South--after the Civil War." Jerry declared, of course, that Gyp's suggestion was "wonderful." "We'll have a real initiation when we'll all swear our allegiance to Lincoln School forever and ever and we'll have spreads and it'll be such fun making every one wonder where we meet. And we'll have terribly funny signs." "What'll we call it?" asked Jerry, ashamed that she could offer nothing to the plan. "Let's call it the Ravens and Serpents--that sounds so awful and we won't be at all. And a crawly snake is such a dreadful symbol and it's easy to draw." Gyp's brain worked at lightning pace in its initiative. "What girls shall we ask?" Gyp rattled off a number of names. They were all girls who were in the Third Form study-room. "Can't we ask Ginny Cox?" Gyp considered. "No," she answered decidedly. "She'd be fun but she's too chummy with Mary Starr and Mary Starr's a Sphinx. We can't ask her." Gyp was right, of course, Jerry thought, but she wished Ginny Cox might be invited to join. "Let's go down now. Oh, won't it be fun? Swear, Jerauld Travis, that burning irons won't drag our secret from you!"