In spite of their eagerness to reach their destination, the ride seemed all too short to the boys and girls. They started when the guard called out, "Molata, next stop!"
Hardly knowing what she was doing, Billie found her hat and coat, put them on, and then sat on the very edge of her seat with her gladstone bag grasped tightly in one hand. Then she looked around at Laura who was sitting in the seat beside her.
It was then she got her surprise. For Laura was sitting in almost the same position as herself, perched on the edge of the seat, bag tightly gripped in one hand, pocketbook in the other and—this was the fact that made Billie chuckle—Laura's hat was very much over one eye.
Laura looked up at the sound of the chuckle and giggled as her eyes met Billie's.
"I'm so excited," she whispered in Billie's ear, "that my knees are trembling. I'm afraid I'll never be able to walk out."
"Well, you needn't expect me to carry you," said Billie, reaching up and putting Laura's hat on straight. "Because I'm going to have all I can do to manage myself. Goodness, what's that?"
It was merely the train stopping, but by the tone of Billie's voice one might have thought it was the end of the world.
"Say, are you girls all ready?" asked Ferd, leaning over the back of their seats.
The girls nodded nervously.
"Well, then let's go," Teddy chimed in, grabbing his suitcase and cap. "Come on, pick up your hats, girls, and don't forget your feet."
"Oh, isn't he funny?" gibed Laura making a face at him. Then she grabbed wildly at her bag as one of the excited girls seemed bent upon carrying it off with her. "Say, come back with that," she cried. "Isn't one enough for you?"
However, they did succeed at last in getting themselves safely on the station platform. It was a pretty station, and this being their first glimpse of the place where they were going to spend so much time, they looked about them with interest.
Molata was the nearest town to Three Towers Hall and Boxton Military Academy. Both of these schools were situated on Lake Molata, for which the town had been named. Most of the inhabitants of Molata were wealthy, and the estates in and about the town were magnificent. There was also a large hotel, filled during the summer season.
Even the station was in keeping with the general air of prosperity. In the minute the girls had to look about them, they saw a stone-built waiting room with a red-tiled roof. A beautiful green velvety lawn completely surrounded the station on three sides, while on one side a beautiful fountain sent its sparkling spray high into the clear air. And further back through the trees they caught glimpses of beautiful estates.
They found themselves being hustled toward the other end of the station where two conveyances, one from Three Towers Hall and the other from Boxton Military Academy, were waiting to take the girls and boys to their destination.
Two attendants tended to the trunks and deposited the luggage inside the cabs, while the girls and boys said excited good-byes to each other on the platform.
"We'll be only a little over a mile away from you," Chet called out. "And when we get an afternoon off we'll row down the lake and get you girls."
"Oh, won't that be fun!" cried Vi, her eyes dancing. "I'm just crazy to get out on the lake."
"Goodness, we haven't even seen it yet," Laura reminded her.
"Yes, and if we're going to," Billie added, "I guess we'd better get started. Come on, girls. Everybody's in but us. Good-bye, Chet! Good-bye, Ferd and Teddy! Please be good and don't get sent home the first week—we wouldn't have anybody to give us that row, you know. Good-bye—good-bye——"
Laura and Vi had already clambered into the long, car-like machine withThree Towers Hallpainted in gold letters on the outside and were impatiently commanding Billie to follow them.
As soon as she was inside the boys rushed to the car withBoxton Military Academypainted in gold letters on the outside, and the good-byes were over.
As they left the station and swung into a wide smooth road on their way to Three Towers Hall the girls relaxed with a sigh of happiness.
"Isn't this a wonderful road?" said Billie, screwing her head around so that she could look out the window. The machine had two long seats on either side, running from the front to the back of it so that, in turning, Billie accidentally stuck her elbow into the girl next to her.
She had not noticed the girl, but now, when the latter spoke, Billie turned around quickly. The girl was Eliza Dilks, Amanda Peabody's chum, and beside her sat Amanda herself looking on with her usual sneering grin.
"Say, if you haven't got room enough," Eliza said in a thin high voice, "I can move over to the other side of the car."
For a minute Billie just stared, while several girls about them paused in their own conversations to listen. Vi was aghast and Laura was furious.
"Well," said Billie at last, letting her gaze travel from Eliza's mean face to her ill-fitting shoes—somewhere Billie had heard that people hate to have you look at their feet—"maybe you'd better move. There's lots more room on the other side."
The girls chuckled. Laura said: "Good for you, Billie," under her breath, and Eliza flushed angrily. She seemed about to speak, but as Billie was still gazing steadily at her feet she looked down at them herself and thereby lost the battle.
However, the incident had made them miss some of the prettiest scenery in Molata, and it was almost with a feeling of regret that the girls saw the majestic three towers of Three Towers Hall rise before them.
Their regret did not last long, however; and when the car started up the broad driveway the girls strained their eyes for a better view.
It was a beautiful place. The hall itself was built of rough, greenish-gray stone, and over the whole front of it, twining round the windows, hanging over the doors, grew clinging, bright green ivy.
A smooth velvety lawn sloped down straight to the water, and the girls cried out at this, their first glimpse of Lake Molata. Through the trees, the water of the lake glistened and shimmered and danced while the soft rippling sound of tiny wavelets lapping at the bank seemed to call to them invitingly.
"Oh, g-girls, it's lovelier even than we pictured it!" cried Laura, stammering in her eagerness. "Aren't you just c-crazy to get out on that water?"
"Yes. But look!" cried Billie, grasping her arm and pointing to the front door of Three Towers Hall. "There's the president, I suppose, waiting to welcome us."
For in the doorway was standing a slender figure in white, evidently waiting, as Billie had said, to welcome the girls to Three Towers Hall.
Other girls had noticed her, too, and as the attendant came around and opened the door, they all scrambled down in a flurry of excitement.
"It's Miss Walters," the whisper went around, and Billie felt a thrill of excitement.
"Miss Walters!" Always she had seemed to Billie a person to be looked up to—a sort of goddess set apart from ordinary mortals. For Miss Sara Walters had been head of Three Towers Hall for a number of years—always, it seemed to Billie. And now Billie was actually going to see her, talk to her, perhaps even make her take notice of her, Billie, above the others!
As she rather breathlessly ascended the steps to the entrance of Three Towers with the other girls she studied this slim, straight woman who had been the heroine of so many of her day dreams.
And what she saw satisfied even Billie.
Miss Walters was only thirty-five, but her hair was snow white and framed her face in thick wavy masses. Her complexion was pink and white, and her dark violet eyes looked almost black under their dark lashes. And her figure was that of a girl of twenty.
"Isn't she wonderful?" Vi whispered in her ear; but Billie squeezed her arm warningly.
"Sh-h," she said. "She might hear us."
"I wouldn't care if she did," said Violet with unusual spirit, and in her heart Billie could not blame her.
A moment more and Miss Walters was speaking to them, saying a few words to each of them, welcoming them to Three Towers Hall.
Then she turned and led the way into the building, the girls crowding after her eagerly.
"And her voice," said Billie, adoringly in Laura's ear, "is the very sweetest part of her!"
Miss Walters took the girls into her office, looked up the cards she had made out for them—for of course their names had been sent in some time before as prospective students at Three Towers Hall—and then called in another teacher, Miss Ada Dill, who had part charge of the dormitories.
Miss Dill was tall and thin with sharp black eyes and white hair drawn severely back from her forehead. She smiled when Miss Walters introduced her to the girls, but her smile reminded Billie of the smile on the face of a Chinese idol which she and her chums had come upon among the antiques of the old homestead at Cherry Corners. It was merely a crack in her face and the beady black eyes remained unsmiling.
"Miss Dill," Miss Walters told the girls, "will show you your places in the dormitories and will give you the hours for meals and such other information as you will need at first. Lunch will be served in half an hour, and after that you may have the rest of the day to yourselves to become acquainted with Three Towers Hall."
Then she dismissed them, and Billie and the other new arrivals found themselves following the stiff back of Miss Dill through the corridor and up a broad flight of steps.
They met several girls on their way to the dormitory, and the latter looked at them curiously. The girls learned a little later that these students had spent the summer at Three Towers, although most of the girls had gone home to relatives and friends and would not be back until the next day.
It was a rule at Three Towers Hall that the new students should report the day before the year formally opened for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the rules and regulations of the school.
"Wasn't that a pretty girl?" Vi whispered to Billie, as Miss Ada Dill opened the dormitory door and a lovely girl with very pink cheeks and very black hair stopped for a word with the teacher and then hurried past the girls on her way downstairs. "I wonder who she is."
"If she's as nice as she is pretty," Billie whispered back, "she'll be all right."
Then they stepped into the long, many-windowed room and looked about them curiously. There were beds, beds, beds and more beds. Everywhere the girls looked they seemed to see nothing but beds. As a matter of fact there were only ten of them, but the girls could have sworn there were at least twice that number.
"We can put five of you girls in here," Miss Dill said in a crisp, dry tone, almost as if she resented having to say it at all. "Are there any of you who would particularly like to be together?"
Of course Billie spoke up for herself and Laura and Vi, and after regarding her severely through her glasses for a moment, Miss Dill finally assigned three beds at the further end of the room to the chums.
"Then there is room for two more," Miss Dill said, and to the horror of the chums Amanda Peabody came forward, holding Eliza Dilks by the hand.
Laura uttered a little exclamation and seemed about to protest when Billie pinched her arm and made her say "ouch" instead.
"There's no use in saying anything," Billie whispered fiercely. "It wouldn't do any good, and we'd only make more of an enemy of that—those girls."
They were relieved a little when they saw that "those girls" were assigned to beds half way down the room so there would at least be a few neutral girls in the beds between.
"So if the rest of you will come with me," said Miss Dill, "I will give you places in the other dormitories."
Then she and the other girls went out into the hall, the door was shut, and the chums were left alone in the big room with Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks.
The girls sank down upon their beds and looked about them curiously. There was a little wash basin and a towel rack beside each snowy white bed and on the towel rack hung several small towels with blue and white borders.
The beds were set at regular intervals down the long room, and the spaces in between them were fitted out in such a manner as almost to make a separate little room for each girl.
Beside the wash basins, there was a dresser set at the foot of each white bed and under each bed was a hamper for soiled clothes. Each girl had a little table with a chair to match.
The woodwork had been painted white and the walls were a grayish blue color with several pretty pictures scattered about them to break the bareness.
"Why, the room's all blue and white," Billie suddenly discovered delightedly. "Isn't that a lovely blue they've painted the wall? And the snowy white woodwork! Oh, it's delicious!"
"And just look at the view from this window!" cried Vi, beckoning to them eagerly. As the girls looked over her shoulder they fairly gasped with delight.
Below them stretched the velvety lawn dotted with the darker green of shrubbery, while away through the trees glimmered and gleamed the water of Lake Molata. The day was warm for autumn, and a gentle breeze played among the leaves of the great trees bordering the lake, coming to the girls in a soft, rustling whisper. The picture was almost too perfect to be true.
"And she said," Billie murmured at last with a sigh of content, "that we could have all the afternoon to become acquainted with Three Towers."
"Yes," said Laura, turning from the window, "but I guess she meant only the inside of Three Towers. I don't believe they will allow us off the grounds so soon."
At that moment the door opened and the pretty girl that had passed them in the hall entered and shut the door softly behind her. In the bright light of the room she seemed even prettier than she had in the hall, but there was something about her—Billie could hardly have told what, perhaps it was the expression of her mouth—that made Billie instinctively dislike her.
The strange girl's eyes rested on Amanda and Eliza where they sat in their corner, talking in whispers, and her lips curled disdainfully. Then she came over to where Billie and her friends were standing.
"Hello!" she said with a quick smile. "You're the new girls, I suppose, and we might as well get acquainted right away. My name is Rose Belser, and I'm from Brighting," mentioning a town several miles the other side of North Bend.
"We're awfully glad to know you," Billie answered, with her own particular friendly smile. "I'm Beatrice Bradley, and these are my two chums, Violet Farrington and Laura Jordon. We're from North Bend."
"Glad to know you," said Rose Belser with a quick little nod of her black head. Then she curled herself on the foot of Billie's bed and proceeded to make herself at home.
"I've been staying here for the summer," she told them. "It's an awful place to spend the summer, you know. First time I ever did it, and I never was so lonesome in my life."
"Why, I'd love to spend the summer here," said Vi, thinking of the beautiful country they had glimpsed and the lovely lake where one might row or canoe to his heart's content. "The country's so pretty, and you have the lake——"
"Oh, the lake!" the girl interrupted impatiently. "And the country! I'm tired to death of the lake and the country. I want to go to the city where you can wear pretty clothes and go to parties and things."
"But I should think you could wear pretty clothes here," said Billie, wondering. "And as to parties—I thought you always could have parties at boarding school——"
"Maybe you can at some boarding schools," the girl interrupted again with that same impatient toss of her head. "But those schools don't have Dill Pickles for guardian angels."
The girls looked at her as though she had gone crazy, and indeed for a moment they thought she had. But Rose Belser gave a short little laugh and went on to explain.
"The Dill Pickles are two old-maid sisters. One of them brought you up here——"
"Miss Dill!" cried Billie, beginning to see light. "Oh, has she a sister?"
"Yes. And the sister is worse," said the girl, with a little grimace. "They are Miss Ada and Miss Cora, and Miss Cora is the terror of the Hall. If it weren't for Miss Walters——But say, you'd better hurry," she interrupted herself suddenly and jumped to her feet. "It's almost time for the lunch gong to ring, and if you're late for lunch, Miss Cora will be furious. She has charge of the dining hall, you know. You'd better wash and straighten your hair. Miss Cora looks you through with a gimlet eye."
She ran over to her wash basin, which happened to be the next one to Billie's, and began to wash her hands vigorously.
"Oh, dear, we forgot all about lunch, and we must be a sight!" cried Vi, pulling off her hat and excitedly patting her hair. "Girls, we haven't any combs—our trunks haven't come up yet. Give me a comb, somebody! Oh, here's one in my grip."
"How strange," mocked Billie, dashing cold water on her face till it shone rosily. "It almost seems to me I have one in mine also."
"Well, you'd better get busy and use it," Violet retorted, drawing her own comb through her heavy hair, "or you'll get in bad the very first day. Oh, dear! there's the gong." She stopped with her comb in the air and gazed in horror at the girls. As for Billie and Laura, they stood as if they had suddenly become paralyzed.
"If you'd start in time you'd be ready in time," said a nasal voice from the other end of the room, and the girls glanced around quickly. They had been so absorbed in their new experience that for a time they had completely forgotten Amanda and Eliza. But now they turned just in time to see the two girls leaving the room. As she shut the door behind her Amanda gave it a defiant little slam.
"Say, who's your friend?" asked Rose Belser, looking in astonishment at the closed door. "She's pleasant, isn't she?"
"They're neither of them friends of ours," said Billie, jerking her hair angrily as though she wished it had been Amanda's hair instead. "They just happen to come from the same town, that's all."
"Never mind about Amanda, Billie," pleaded Violet, looking uneasily at the door. "We're late——"
"Oh, don't worry," interrupted Rose, giving a final pat to her black hair. "That was only the first gong. The second one rings five minutes later. There it goes now. Are you ready?"
The girls were ready, and with quickly beating hearts they stepped out into the corridor.
"This way," said their new acquaintance, turning to the right and starting for the stairs. "Now for the second of the Dill Pickles. Long may she wave!" she added gaily.
It was a new experience for Billie Bradley and for Laura and Violet—that hour in the dining hall. The hall itself was an immense room and seemed at first glance to be made up almost entirely of windows. As Rose Belser afterward remarked to the girls, there was one thing that no one at Three Towers Hall had to complain of, and that was lack of light.
Three tables stretched almost the entire length of the hall, and although they all bore snowy cloths there was only one of them that was really "set for action," as Laura said.
Most of the girls had already assembled when the chums reached the dining hall. They were standing around in little groups of two or three, talking excitedly, and while the girls were hesitating which group to join Miss Cora Dill swept into the room.
"Now you'd better mind your Ps and Qs," Rose whispered to them, and the girls regarded with interest the second of the Dill twin sisters who had been called by the disrespectful name of the "Twin Dill Pickles."
Miss Cora Dill was indeed Miss Ada's counter-part. There was the same thin figure and straight back, the same black eyes and thin-lipped mouth, the only difference being that where Miss Ada's hair was white, Miss Cora's hair still retained some traces of its original brown color.
"Goodness, I'm glad there's some way we can tell them apart," said Billie to Laura in an under-tone. "If they were just exactly alike we'd have to do with them the way they do with twin babies—tie a blue ribbon on one and a pink ribbon on the other."
The idea of tying a pink ribbon or any other kind of ribbon on the "Twin Dill Pickles" was so ridiculous that the girls giggled aloud, thereby causing Vi to nudge Billie sharply.
"Sh-h," she whispered. "Her Highness is about to speak."
Miss Cora carried some cards in her hands, and as the girls gathered about her she asked them to answer when she called out their names.
Although there were a hundred students in Three Towers Hall, there were only half a dozen who, like pretty Rose Belser, had spent the summer at the school.
The rest of the girls were almost all from North Bend and the other surrounding towns, although a few had come from a distance.
When the girls had all reported present, Miss Cora gave them their seats at the table and took her own place at the head of it.
At first the girls were not at all sure whether they were supposed to talk or not, for the presence of thin-lipped Miss Cora at the head of the table threw rather a damper on both their enthusiasm and their appetites.
However, when Rose Belser leaned across several girls to say something to Billie the rest of the girls took courage and a little murmur of conversation traveled around the table.
The lunch was a satisfying one, and the girls, beginning to recover from their excitement and being really hungry from the long train trip, ate heartily.
But every once in a while, when the talk and laughter about the table threatened to become too hilarious, the girls were conscious of Miss Cora's voice reminding them that the table was the "place for decorum—not for rioting."
Billie and her chums were half way down the table, a fact for which they were very thankful. Placed only two or three seats away from Miss Cora, at the head of the table, was Nellie Bane. Nellie seemed to have struck up a sudden friendship with one of the half dozen girls who had spent the summer at the school, and the two were evidently having an interesting conversation.
Billie, catching Nellie's eye, telegraphed to her by means of the sign language the wish to see her some time after lunch, and Nellie, in the same language, agreed.
At last lunch was over and the girls reluctantly left the table. But as they were about to leave the room Miss Cora called them together again, saying that she had something important to say to them.
"You will each find a set of rules on your dresser," she said. "And before you do anything else it will be well for each girl to become thoroughly acquainted with them and the penalties for breaking them. After to-day any departure from the rules will meet with the proper punishment."
"Anybody would think we were three years old," grumbled Laura, when they were on their way back to the dormitories. "Goodness, I wonder who ever let her in, anyway."
"Oh, you'll soon get used to her," Rose assured them. She seemed to have attached herself definitely to the girls, who, although they found her amusing and interesting, would rather have been left to themselves on this first day. "Everybody dislikes her at first—and Miss Ada, too—but they only laugh at them after awhile. You see," she finished as if the girls must understand, "we have Miss Walters."
"Well, all I have to say," said Laura, whose temper had been considerably ruffled by this second of the "Twin Dill Pickles," "is that it's lucky Miss Walters and not Miss Cora is at the head of things."
When the girls reached the dormitory they looked for the rules, found them, and sat down eagerly to read them over together. First of all they found that the dormitories, eleven in all, were lettered. The letter of their dormitory was "C."
There were the usual rules about late hours, going outside the grounds without leave, neglecting to wear rubbers in the rain, all with the usual penalties attached. But the one that most interested the girls was the punishment given for keeping lights on after hours.
"Three days without recreation and isolation in the dormitory for the duration of that period," read Billie indignantly. "Goodness! I wonder if all that happens to you if you keep your light on five minutes after hours."
"It does if Miss Cora or Miss Ada catches you," drawled Rose, from where she was curled up again on the foot of the bed watching the girls with lazy interest. "Some of the teachers are all right. There's Miss Harris, and Miss Race the math teacher. If they catch you just a few minutes over time they'll give you a lecture and let you off without reporting it to Miss Walters. But if it's any of the others—look out, that's all."
A few minutes later Nellie Bane came in, bringing her new friend with her, and for a little while the girls forgot all about rules and "Twin Dill Pickles" and everything else and just had a good time.
Nellie's new acquaintance was a small fluffy little blonde whom the girls liked right away. Her name was Constance Danvers, called "Connie" for short, and the name seemed to suit her exactly. Of course, she and Rose Belser, having spent the preceding year together, knew each other well, but Billie noticed that the two girls did not seem over friendly.
"I don't know," she thought to herself, "but I'm going to like Connie better than Rose."
A little while later Rose suggested that she and Connie show the girls about the Hall, to which the newcomers eagerly agreed.
"I wonder," said Vi suddenly, as they were about to leave the room, "what has become of Amanda and Eliza Dilks. They haven't been up here since lunch."
"Well, why should we care?" sang out Billie happily. "I only hope they stay away."
"Probably up to some mean tricks," said Laura gloomily.
Connie and Rose were eager to hear more of Eliza and her friend, but the chums could not be made to tell tales. The girls would have to find out what Amanda was for themselves.
"Only," thought Billie to herself, as they ran down the stairs, "I would like to know where those two sneaks are and why they didn't come back to the dormitory. I know they'lltryto spoil all our fun, even if they can'tdoit."
How the girls did enjoy the rest of that afternoon! Connie and Rose showed them the classrooms and lecture rooms, told them little stories about the different teachers and recounted funny incidents of school life that made the girls bubble with laughter.
All the rooms were high-ceilinged, many-windowed and cheerful, but it was the lecture hall and gymnasium that the girls thought the most attractive of all.
The lecture room was on the third floor and was arranged in the shape of a Roman circus, the seats in tiers all around the room with the lecture platform in the center.
"My, I won't even mind being lectured to in a room like this," said Vi, in an awed little voice. "Do you have many lectures?"
"Too many," drawled Rose, sinking down in one of the seats and spreading out her ruffled dress carefully. The girls had been too excited to notice the dress before, but now they saw it was much more elaborate than any they had brought with them, except one or two apiece for party wear.
"I wonder if all the girls dress like that for every day," thought Billie in a sort of panic, looking down at the pretty little brown cloth dress she had thought so wonderful at home. She wondered if Vi and Laura felt the same way.
A little later they wandered downstairs to the gymnasium, and then all thought of clothes was put in the background.
Around the gymnasium were all sorts of swinging ladders and standing ladders. There were punching bags and medicine balls; in fact, everything calculated to make strong healthy women of the girls who came to Three Towers Hall.
There was a swimming pool, also, and over this the girls went into raptures. They had had scarcely any opportunity to learn to swim in North Bend, and although on their visits to New York they had never failed—that is, in the summer time—to take a dip, or several of them, in the Atlantic Ocean, they had never learned to swim more than a few strokes at a time.
"A swimming pool!" cried Billie. "I suppose we might have known we would have one here. Now we can really learn to swim. I wonder," and so interested had she been with her own affairs that this was the first time she had even given the boys a thought, "if Chet and Teddy and Ferd have a swimming pool at Boxton Academy."
"Boxton Academy?" Rose took her up quickly, suddenly looking interested. "Do you know any one who goes there?"
"I should say we do," put in Laura proudly. "Billie's——"
"Billie?" Connie interrupted, looking puzzled.
"I'm 'Billie,'" Billie explained, with a laugh. "They call me 'Billie' for short."
"Never mind about that," Rose put in impatiently. "What were you saying about the boys?"
The girls looked at pretty, black-haired, pink-cheeked Rose, and Billie realized suddenly why it was she had not altogether liked the girl.
"She'll be friendly to almost any girl if she happens to like her brother," she thought, and instinctively she glanced at Laura. The latter must have had almost the same thought, for she gave Billie a meaning glance.
"You said they were at Boxton Academy," Rose insisted.
"Tell us about them," said Connie. She was interested, but in an entirely different sort of way.
"Well, there's Billie's brother and mine and a chum of theirs, Ferd Stowing. They came with us as far as Molata. Then they left us for the Academy and we came on here. And we were having such a good time we never thought about them," she finished penitently.
The girls were eager to look about the grounds of Three Towers after that, but Rose would not let them go till she had found out all about the boys and their "life history," as Billie resentfully said later. After that the girls noticed that she was even more friendly than she had been before.
"Oh, well," said Billie to herself, feeling strangely comforted by the thought, "she won't have much of a chance to see the boys, anyway, because we can only leave the grounds on special permission and they won't be able to get away from the Academy to come here very often. I suppose I'm an awful cat," she finished ruefully, "but I'm not going to let her meet any of our boys if I can help it."
A little later she forgot all about her irritation in the delight of walking about the beautifully kept grounds of Three Towers and examining the outside of the picturesque old building itself.
The latter was even more beautiful than they had thought in their first glimpse of it, with its rugged, ivy-grown walls and its three-battlemented towers rising above the trees.
"It looks almost like an old castle," cried Billie. "The kind you read about in 'The Days of Chivalry.' All it needs is a——"
"Moat," finished Laura excitedly. "I was just thinking that, Billie."
"Yes, a moat would make it just perfect," sighed Violet, adding, with a laugh: "Anyway, even if we haven't the moat, we have a lake."
"Yes, let's go down and look at it," proposed Connie. "We've had wonderful times on it all summer."
"Doing what?" asked Laura eagerly. "Do they let you row on it—all by yourselves?"
"I should say not," answered Rose, with a little toss of her head. "You have to learn to swim in the pool first so that if you upset your boat you won't get drowned. It's their great boast that no girl has ever been drowned at Three Towers."
"Well, we don't want to start anything," said Billie, with a little grimace, and the girls laughed.
"Then," Rose went on, "after you learn to swim you have to take an instructor out in the rowboat or canoe with you until she thinks you know how to handle it like an expert."
"What do you mean by an instructor?" asked Vi. "One of the teachers?"
"Sometimes it's a teacher," Connie spoke up. "But as a rule it's one of the older girls in the first grade who teaches the younger ones. Miss Walters said," and her fair face flushed with pleasure, "that perhaps next semester I shall be appointed as instructor."
"Oh, isn't that great?" cried Billie heartily, for she was beginning to like Connie Danvers with all her heart. Then, too, she had noticed with a feeling of relief that Connie was not dressed like Rose Belser. She had on a pretty cloth dress very much like Billie's own. "And she didn't seem crazy to know all about the boys," she added, with an added warmth around her heart.
"I wonder," she said aloud, "how long it will take us girls to learn to become instructors."
"Well, I don't know about the rest of us," spoke up Nellie Bane; "but I know it won't take you very long, Billie. You were always the very first to pick up anything."
As with most of the rest of Billie's friends, Nellie shared the conviction that Billie could do everything she tried to do just a little bit better than any one else.
"I should say so," Laura added loyally. "There's nothing that you can't do, Billie."
Billie flushed with pleasure and Rose Belser looked at her with new interest. For if Rose was not the most popular girl at Three Towers she certainly thought she was and the praise of Billie's friends started her thinking. Could it be possible that here was a rival? But she shook her dark head impatiently. If this Billie Bradley thought she could start anything, why, she, Rose, would show her, that was all!
And all the time Billie, who had no thought of what was going on in the other girl's mind, was having the time of her life.
"Look at all the canoes!" she cried. "And they actually have racks for them."
They had come down to a little dock that jutted out into the lake and had been hidden from their view, or at least partly so, by the trees. Now, as they came out upon it, they stood astonished and delighted by the sight that met their eyes.
There were half a dozen racks on the dock, each one constructed so as to contain three canoes, one above the other, and every rack was full.
The canoes were each neatly covered with a tarpaulin, but the tarpaulin, drawn tight, revealed the long graceful outline of each beautiful little boat, and the girls fairly ached to launch one of them upon the water.
"And there are rowboats, too," cried Vi, making another discovery. "Lots and lots of them! Look! Here they are—tied to the dock."
Sure enough, there were fully a dozen gaily painted rowboats swaying gently in the water on either side of the dock, sometimes straining a little at the ropes that held them.
"But who would row when they could canoe?" cried Billie, for in Billie was a passion for canoes which Chet had always declared must have come from her Indian ancestors. "I think rowboats are horribly clumsy."
"Hardly anybody really likes to row," Connie answered, "but we have to do it for the exercise, Miss Walters says there's no better exercise in the world than rowing."
"Yes," said Billie, with a little laugh. "And no harder work, either."
"Do you do much swimming in the lake?" asked Nellie, gazing down at her reflection in the still water.
"Oh, we can," Rose answered. "But no one likes it very much. They'd rather do their swimming in the swimming pool. There's a mud bottom to the lake, and the water, though it looks mighty nice, isn't good to drink."
While they were speaking two girls whom the chums remembered having seen in the dining hall but did not know came down to the dock, and, after waving to Rose and Connie, went to a rack and started to take down one of the canoes.
The girls watched rather wistfully while they slipped it from the rack, removed the cover, and slid it into the smooth water.
One girl with a skill born of experience jumped into the front seat of the canoe, lifted one of the paddles and waited while her companion settled herself in the stern seat. Then they glided from the dock softly, almost silently but for the dip of the paddles in the water, and drifted out toward the middle of the lake.
"Oh, if we could only do that," sighed Billie, "I think I'd die happy."
"Those girls are instructors," Connie explained. "They are in the first grade and expect to graduate in the spring."
"It's funny, I suppose," said Billie, dreamily gazing up at the blood red sun that was slowly sinking in the western sky, "but I'm really sorry for them."
"Why?" they asked, surprised.
"Because," said Billie soberly, "they have to graduate and leave Three Towers!"
The girls sat up till the very last minute that night, discussing the absorbing happenings of the day. Rose left them to talk to some of the other girls—a fact for which they were thankful—and Nellie and Connie Danvers went to their dormitory, leaving the three chums alone at last.
They had had supper, a meal not as good as lunch, for the meat had been too crisp, almost burned in fact, and then they had come up to the dormitory for a good time together.
They were rather disgruntled to find that Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks were there before them, but even that fact could not bother them much—not to-night!
"I tell you what let's do," said Billie, patting her brown curls into place before her mirror and noticing with surprise how flushed her face was and how her eyes sparkled. How could she know, being modest, that not only her friends, but almost all the girls that had seen them together, thought her even prettier than Rose Belser.
"What?" asked Vi, sinking down on the edge of her bed with a sigh of content. "I don't feel as if I wanted to do any more for years but just sit here and talk things over."
"Well, that's just what I was going to say," Billie answered, turning away from the mirror and flinging herself on the bed beside her. "Only I thought it would be more comfortable if we got into our nighties. It's been a pretty warm day——"
"Billie, you're a wonder," cried Laura, jumping up and fishing in her bag for her nightgown. "When it comes to thinking you have it all over us like a tent—as Teddy says," she added apologetically, and the girls laughed at her.
"Oh, but there are our trunks!" cried Billie, suddenly remembering. "Miss Walters said that we were to unpack our clothes and get everything in shape before to-morrow, don't you remember?"
"Oh, yes, we remember," groaned Violet. "I don't think much of your idea this time, Billie. Oh, well, I suppose if we must we've got to."
So they opened the trunks, which had been brought up while they were out in the afternoon, and in a very short time had their clothes all hung up neatly in the wardrobes.
Then, with a sigh of mingled content and weariness, they brought out their nightgowns and began to undress, talking all the while.
"Isn't Miss Walters lovely?" asked Billie, when she was at last curled up happily on the foot of the bed with Vi at the head of it and Laura stretched out full length with a pillow tucked beneath her head.
"Yes, but aren't the 'Dill Pickles' horrid?" cried Laura. "It's lucky they aren't at the head of things or I guess we'd have a mighty hard time of it."
"Well, maybe they aren't as bad as they look," said Violet.
"Who was that other teacher that Connie said the girls all loved so?" asked Billie. "I thought I'd remember her name. It was something like Pace——"
"Wasn't it Race?" asked Laura, and Billie clapped her hands.
"Yes, that's it. And Connie said the girls adored her next to Miss Walters."
"She's the math teacher, isn't she?" asked Violet, adding as the girls nodded: "It's lucky for me she's nice, because I'm so awful in math a mean one wouldn't have me in class more than a week."
"Oh, but it's all perfectly glorious," said Billie softly. "Just think, girls, if we hadn't found that darling old trunk we wouldn't have been here—at least I wouldn't."
"And if that man—What was it you and the boys called him?" Laura paused and looked inquiringly at Billie.
"The 'Codfish?'" asked Billie, guessing at what she meant.
"Yes. And if the 'Codfish' hadn't got scared and dropped the trunk in the middle of the road you would have lost it after all."
"Yes," sighed Vi, "and that would have been worse than not finding it at all."
"The only thing that bothers me," said Billie, with a little frown, "is that we didn't go after that man and get him. He may be a regular thief for all we know, and if he is he ought to be in prison where he belongs. Every once in a while," her voice lowered and she looked over her shoulder nervously, "I dream about him, and when I do he always has a mask or something over his eyes, but his codfish mouth is always there sort of grinning at me——"
"Billie!" cried Laura and Vi in the same voice, and Laura got up suddenly, sat on her pillow, and regarded Billie with startled eyes.
"But you never told us!" she said. "Have you—have you dreamed that often?"
"No, only once or twice," said Billie. "Just the same, I wish we could have caught him. I always have a sort of feeling that if he robs anybody else it will be our fault for not having had him arrested when we had the chance. Of course, he may not be a regular thief at all. But, oh, girls, he was an awful looking thing. And I feel sure some day I'll meet him again."
"You said he had red hair, didn't you?" asked Laura, a delicious little thrill running up and down her spine. "And little eyes and that broad codfishy mouth. Goodness! I wish I'd been with you when you chased him. It must have been no end of fun."
"Fun!" exclaimed Billie. "I should say it wasn't fun. Not when I was afraid I was going to lose the trunk and everything. I was just scared stiff."
"But do you really think you'd know the man again if you saw him?" Laura insisted.
"Why, of course I would," said Billie. "Didn't I tell you I've dreamed of him a couple of times—just as he is? I couldn't miss him."
"Wouldn't it be fun," cried Laura eagerly, "if he should try to rob the Hall or something and we caught him?"
"Laura!" they cried, and Billie added with a shiver: "It might be your idea of a good time, but it wouldn't be mine. I hope I'll never have to see his old codfish mouth again."
"Oh, I don't know," said Laura, putting the pillow under her head and lying down again. "Sometimes when I'm very brave I wish something really exciting would happen—you know, a burglary or something. I'd just like to see what I'd do."
"Well, I know what I'd do——" Vi was beginning, when the "lights-out" gong sounded through the hall and the girls scurried wildly for their beds.
Amanda and Eliza were already in theirs, and Rose, coming in at the last minute, fairly flew into her nightgown and then scurried over to put out the one remaining light.
The room had been in silence and darkness for nearly five minutes when suddenly Laura leaned over and whispered to Vi.
"What would you do if a burglar got in?" she asked.
"I'd just get under the covers," said Vi, "and die off fright!"
If any one had told the three girls that the second day would hold more of excitement and pleasure than the first, they would not have believed it. But so it was.
Billie woke early that morning and found the sun shining gloriously through the window. It took her a minute or two to realize just where she was. Then she sat up in bed and looked across at her two sleeping chums.
Laura lay on her side, hugging her pillow, and Violet was flat on her back, blissfully unconscious of the ray of sunshine that fell across her face.
Billie's glance traveled from them to Rose Belser, who looked as pretty asleep as she did awake, and from her to Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks.
She made a little grimace as she looked at them, for their straight, stringy hair and pinched, freckled faces were a striking contrast to Rose's prettiness.
"Oh, I wish everybody'd get up," she thought. "It must be nearly seven o'clock."
Even as she spoke the first bell rang, and the sudden sharp noise through the still Hall made her start up in bed. It roused the other girls, and they yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Goodness, is it time to get up already?" asked Laura, glaring at Billie as if it were all her fault. "Why, I just this very minute got to sleep."
"You'd better stop talking and get up," Rose called to them, flinging back her black hair and jumping to her feet. "We have only half an hour to get ready for breakfast, and if you're late and haven't any excuse—well, don't expect any sympathy from Miss Cora, that's all."
The girls did not need any second hint to make them hurry, and full ten minutes before the breakfast gong rang they were ready and waiting.
There was great excitement in the dining hall, for this was the day when the old students of Three Towers Hall were expected, and the girls who had remained at the school for the summer vacation were eager to renew old friendships.
It was about ten o'clock when the girls began to pour in, and from then on excitement and confusion reigned.
"It makes you feel kind of lonesome," said Laura, with a sigh.
"And the older girls look awfully dressed up and—and—stuck up," said Vi, snuggling up to Billie as if for comfort. "Do you suppose they really are, Billie—stuck up, I mean?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Billie, feeling a little nervous herself. "For all we know," she added, with a chuckle, "we may look stuck up ourselves."
"Well, maybe we are," Laura giggled. "That's what Amanda is always calling us, you know."
"Oh, look," whispered Vi suddenly. "There's Rose Belser with one of the new girls. I wonder who she is."
The new girl in question was a nice looking, rather serious girl who wore glasses and looked to the girls—so they said later—as if she might really like to study. She was carrying a grip and had evidently just arrived.
While the girls watched, she and Rose turned and started in their direction. For a minute Billie could have sworn Rose did not mean to stop. However, she did stop, and rather reluctantly introduced the stranger to them.
"This is Caroline Brant," she said, adding as she turned to the strange girl with a queer little smile: "These are some of the new girls who are in our dorm, Caroline. Billie Bradley, Violet Farrington and Laura Jordon."
Caroline Brant shook hands and smiled a grave smile that seemed "just made to go with her glasses," Laura said afterward. When the girl had passed on with Rose toward the stairway, the chums had a queer sense of comfort—as though they had found at least one good friend at Three Towers Hall.
Lunch came and went, and so absorbed were the girls in the fun and excitement of meeting new girls and listening to stories of good times had during the summer that dinner caught them before they knew it and they found that the day was gone.
Everybody went to bed early that night, for Miss Walters had sent around an order that all lights should be out by nine o'clock sharp. The next day the real work of the term was to begin, and she wanted all her girls bright and fresh for the start.
The next week would have been perfect for the girls, but for one thing. They liked their classrooms, which occupied all the second and third floors, they liked their studies, and they loved most of their teachers—especially Miss Race, the mathematics teacher.
But they soon found that what Rose Belser and Connie Danvers had said about Miss Cora and Miss Ada Dill—the "Twin Dill Pickles," when nobody was around—was terribly and awfully true.
The Dill twins never seemed to miss an opportunity to make the girls feel bad. They were sarcastic in class, and seemed to take real delight in hurting the feelings of their pupils whenever it was possible.
It was only a few days after the opening of the school year when Billie had her first little set-to with Miss Cora Dill. The latter had just finished calling the roll and had pushed the book from her. Then she looked sharply at Billie.
"Your name is Beatrice, is it not?" she asked in a tone as acid as her dill pickle nickname.
"Yes, Miss Dill," answered Billie, wondering nervously if there were anything wrong about her name and miserably conscious that the eyes of all the girls were upon her.
"But the girls call you 'Billie,' do they not?" asked Miss Cora.
"Yes," said Billie again.
"But 'Billie' is a boy's name," said Miss Cora tartly, boring Billie through with her black eyes. "And it is extremely unladylike for a girl to bear a boy's name. Extremely unladylike," she repeated, staring at poor Billie, who was as red as a beet and filled with a wild desire to run away and cry.
She might have done it, too, at least the crying part, but a titter from one of the girls in the back of the room saved her. She was no longer afraid, only angry—horribly angry.
So she just looked up in thin-lipped Miss Cora's face and said very quietly: "I never thought about my name being unladylike, Miss Cora, and I'm sure it hasn't made any difference with me. Mother says that it is the way one acts that counts."
"Well, see that you take care of your actions," retorted Miss Dill tartly, and turning to one of the other girls called upon her for a recitation.
But it was Billie who had won the day. The girls knew it and Miss Cora knew it, and this helped to make the latter feel in a still more unkindly mood toward the girl with the "unladylike name."
"I'll watch her," thought Miss Cora angrily. "She isn't the kind to be trusted."
Laura and Violet were furious, and when they returned to the dormitory to prepare for lunch began to hatch all sorts of wild plans by which they could "lay this one of the Dill Pickles low."
"What's the excitement?" asked Rose, and Laura began heatedly to describe what had happened in the schoolroom, while several of the other girls gathered around.
When she came to Billie's answer the girls looked pleased and one of them clapped her hands.
"Good for you, Billie Bradley!" cried a dark girl, joyfully. "You must have given the Dill Pickle the surprise of her life."
"She bearded the lion in his den, the Pickle in her Hall," quoted another of the girls. "You know, I'd have given anything to have been there."
"And you a new girl, too," said another, looking at Billie with admiring eyes.
From that time on Billie became a noted figure among the hundred girls at Three Towers Hall, and her fame and popularity grew in leaps and bounds.
Rose Belser viewed this new state of affairs calmly at first, then with alarm, and later with dismay. That a new girl should come to Three Towers and immediately begin to shoulder herself into the limelight was unthinkable, impossible, it couldn't be done. And yet Billie Bradley was doing it!
After a while she began to draw away from Billie, look indifferent when one of the girls spoke of her praisingly, slighted her in a hundred little ways that Billie herself could hardy put her finger on. And yet she felt it.
Billie had one other constant enemy at Three Towers, and that was Miss Cora. Miss Cora never missed a chance to humiliate her—or at least try to humiliate her. But Billie was so happy and having such a wonderful time that she never gave these attempts any more attention than she would so many mosquito bites, thereby fanning Miss Cora's dislike of her.
Meanwhile the two Miss Dills grew more and more sour and crabbed until the girls began to wonder "why they didn't die of it." Then one noon time Laura came running into the dormitory, her eyes big and round with excitement.
"What do you think?" she cried, while the girls gathered round her. "I heard Miss Cora and Miss Ada talking together. I was in the lab and they were in the hall and they didn't know I was anywhere around."
"Well?" asked the girls impatiently as she paused for breath.
"They were talking about our meals," Laura went on. "They said we got altogether too much to eat."
"Too much to eat!" echoed the girls, looking at one another wonderingly.
"Why, we don't get any more than we want," said Billie.
"What else did they say, Laura?" urged Vi.
"That was about all." Laura had gone over to the wash basin and was washing her hands hard as though to get some of her dislike of the "Dill Pickles" out of her system. "I was so surprised I couldn't help hearing a couple of sentences. Then I coughed and came out of the lab and they looked as if they'd like to kill me. 'The girls are getting altogether too much to eat,' said Miss Ada." Laura mimicked her to perfection. "'Yes,' said Miss Cora, 'we must give them less—a good deal less.'"
"Well, I'd just like to see them try it, that's all," said Billie, adding with a sigh: "Thank goodness, we still have Miss Walters, anyway. She won't let us quite starve to death!"
"Are we really going to have one, Billie Bradley? Oh, how wonderful!"
Several weeks had passed, and this afternoon the five of them, Laura Jordon, Vi, Nellie Bane, Connie Danvers and Billie, were sitting close together at the very farthest end of Billie's dormitory talking over some plans that made them feel delightfully like conspirators.
"A real feast!" said Violet Farrington eagerly. "With sandwiches and pickles and cake and—and—everything! Oh, Billie, who all are going to be in the party?"
"All the girls from Nellie's dorm, we four and Caroline Brant," Billie said, in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
"But I don't think Caroline will come," said Laura doubtfully. "You know she would lots rather study than go to a party. That's her idea of a good time."
For although Caroline Brant had proved a good friend to the chums, especially to Billie, they had tried in vain to draw her into their little escapades. She was what the girls usually referred to scornfully as "a grind," yet, strange to say, they all loved her.
She willingly helped them with their lessons, had often coached some of the more backward of them for tests, passing them when otherwise they would have hopelessly flunked, and cheerfully helped them out of scrapes when they needed help.
So now it was not strange that Laura should expect her to refuse an invitation to this new escapade—the most forbidden of all forbidden escapades, the midnight feast.
"Well, I'm going to ask her, anyway," Billie said in answer to Laura's objection. "The worst she can do is to say she won't come."
"But you're going to ask Rose, aren't you?" Connie broke in, adding, as Billie frowned and looked doubtful: "She'd never in the world forgive you if you didn't."
"Yes, we'll ask Rose," said Billie, after a minute's hesitation. "Here she comes now," she added, as the door opened and Rose entered. "Come on over here," she called, "I want to ask you something."
She was just about to tell Rose the plans and invite her to the party when the door opened again and Amanda entered with Eliza Dilks. Amanda was never seen without Eliza trailing along in the background, and for this reason the girls had nicknamed the latter, "The Shadow."
By this time the girls at Three Towers Hall had learned to dislike the two sneaks as much as the girls of North Bend disliked Amanda.
Wherever anything was going on, especially of a secret nature, Amanda and "The Shadow" were sure to be prying about, saying mean little things, forcing the girls to move over to some other place where they could be private for a little while.
And now here they were again!
"What do you want?" asked Rose, not noticing the two who had come in after her. Rose's voice was not very pleasant, for she was beginning to show her growing dislike of Billie openly.
"Nothing just now," Billie answered, looking behind Rose to where Amanda and "The Shadow" stood, apparently talking together, yet listening to every word that was being said. "I'll tell you later."
Amanda looked up and her mean little eyes twinkled angrily.
"Don't mind us," she said. "If we're in the way, of course we'll get out. Come on, Eliza," and with their noses in the air she and "The Shadow" sailed out of the room.
"Some day I'm going to kill 'em," said Laura, glaring ferociously at the closed door.
"Go on. What were you going to tell me?" drawled Rose, turning to the mirror and eyeing her pretty reflection with satisfaction.
"You'd better not say anything, Billie," Nellie Bane warned her. "They're probably listening at the keyhole or something."
"It must be horrid to hate everybody and have everybody hate you," mused Connie, smoothing back her pretty hair.
"But they seem to hate Billie most of all," said Vi. "I'm sure I don't know why. It's because she's so popular, I suppose."
Then to Rose, still fussing with her hair before the mirror, came the dawn of an idea. It would be hard to do anything to hurt Billie herself, for, whatever her faults, Rose was not a sneak. But she might make use of Amanda——
It was several days later—the day that had been set for the greatest of all adventures, a midnight feast in the dormitory.
It was Billie who had arranged it all, and although the feast itself was by no means a new idea, she had thought up something to make it a little more interesting and daring.
Each girl had been instructed to learn some little piece or poem which she was to recite on the great occasion. Some of the girls protested on the ground that they were poor at memorizing, but Billie had been firm.
"No recite, no eat," she had said; and so the girls, some joyfully, some reluctantly, had set to work to learn their pieces.
And Billie, full of energy and enthusiasm, had gone to work and got up a regular program with the names of the girls and the recitations they would give. Laura and Vi had helped her make duplicates of the program so that there was one for each girl.
And the strangest thing about the whole affair was that Caroline Brant, junior student and grind, had agreed to make one of the party.
Billie's chums called her a witch, for since Caroline Brant had come to Three Towers Hall she had never been known to take a hand in one adventure, no matter how harmless it may have been. And Rose, growing more and more resentful as she saw even her most faithful followers deserting her for Billie, became more sure that she would have to make use of Amanda and "The Shadow."
Neither Billie nor any of the other girls knew Caroline Brant's real reason for accepting Billie's invitation. The fact was that Caroline had fallen in love with Billie at first sight, perhaps because she was just the opposite of Caroline herself, and had since become as fond of her as if she had been her younger sister.
But all the time, while she had seemed to be engrossed in her studies, she had been keeping one eye on Billie, and with that one eye had seen pretty nearly everything that had happened.
She was as proud of Billie's growing popularity as if it had been herself, but she knew Rose would never stand for the taking of her place by any one. And that was what Billie was very surely doing.
She knew that Amanda and Eliza disliked Billie and would do almost anything to get her into trouble.
And then there was that fourth enemy of Billie's, Miss Cora Dill. Caroline knew that if Miss Cora were to catch Billie in any sort of scrape she would never in the world give her the benefit of the doubt.
And most of all, Caroline knew that Billie, with her imp of mischief, would be the very last to try to keep out of a scrape, and that sooner or later one of her four enemies would get just the proof she wanted to take to Miss Walters.
In that case, so great was her affection for Billie, Caroline had desperately decided that she would go to Miss Walters herself and plead for Billie.
And all this, nobody seeing Caroline, quiet, reserved, studying furiously for the mid-term examinations that were coming dangerously near, would have guessed at. Nor would they have guessed that Caroline was breaking her rule and going to Billie's party simply to keep Billie from harm.