CHAPTER IVAT THE SCHOOL AGAIN
“There’s only one word worse,” said a gloomy voice so close behind them that Vi clapped a hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. “And that,” the gloomy voice went on, “istheft!”
The girls never afterward knew what kept them from breaking loose and running away. Probably it was because they were paralyzed with fright.
While they had thought the man was still in the hut he had come softly up behind them and had overheard the last, at any rate, of what they had said. Billie, as usual, was the first to recover herself.
“Will you take us to Three Towers now?” she asked in a voice that she hardly recognized as her own. “Do you know the way?”
“Yes,” he answered, adding moodily, as though to himself: “Hugo Billings ought to know the way.”
Billie caught at the name quickly, for she had been wondering what this strange person called himself.
“Hugo Billings!” she said eagerly. “Is that your name?”
The man had started on ahead of them through the dark woods, but now he stopped and looked back and Billie could almost feel his eyes boring into her.
“Did I say so?” he asked sharply, then just as quickly turned away and started on again.
“Goodness, I guess he must be a crazy criminal,” thought Billie plaintively, as she and her chums followed their leader, stumbling on over rocks and roots that sometimes bruised their ankles painfully. “I suppose there are some people that are both. Anyway, he must be a criminal, or he wouldn’t have been so mad about my knowing his name.”
The rest of that strange journey seemed interminable. There were times when the girls were sure the man who called himself Hugo Billings was not taking them toward Three Towers Hall at all. It seemed impossible that they could have wandered such a long way into the woods.
Then suddenly their feet struck a hard-beaten path and they almost cried aloud with relief. For they recognized the path and knew that the open road was not far off. Once on the open road, they could find their way alone.
Abruptly the man in front stopped and turned to face them. Once more the girls’ hearts misgavethem. Was he going to make trouble after all? Why didn’t he go on?
And then the man spoke.
“I won’t go any farther with you,” he said, and there was something in his manner of speaking that made them see again in imagination the tired slump of his shoulders, the wild, haunted look in his eyes. “I don’t like the road. But you can find it easily from here. Then turn to your right. Three Towers is hardly half a mile up the road. Good night.”
He turned with abruptness and started back the way they had come. But impulsively Billie ran to him, calling to him to stop. Yet when he did stop and turned to look at her she had not the slightest idea in the world what she had intended to say—if indeed she had really intended to say anything.
“I—I just wanted to thank you,” she stammered, adding, with a swift little feeling of pity for this man who seemed so lonely: “And if there’s anything I can ever do to—to—help you——”
“Who told you I needed help?” cried the man, his voice so harsh and threatening that Billie started back, half falling over a root.
“Why—why,” faltered Billie, saying almost the first thing that came into her mind. “You looked so—so—sad——”
“Sad,” the man repeated bitterly. “Yes, I have enough to make me sad. But help!” he added fiercely. “I don’t need help from you or any one.”
And without another word he turned and strode off into the darkness.
After that it did not take the girls long to reach the road. They felt, someway, as if they must have dreamed their adventure, it had all been so strange and unreal. And yet they knew they had never been more awake in their lives.
“Please don’t talk about it now,” begged Vi when Laura would have discussed it. “Let’s wait till we get in our dorm with lights and everything. I’m just shivering all over.”
For once the others were willing to do as the most timid of the trio wished, and they hurried along in silence till they saw, with hearts full of thankfulness, the lights of Three Towers Hall shine out on the road before them.
“Look, I see the lights!”
“So do I!”
“Thank goodness we haven’t much farther to go.”
“It’s all of a quarter of a mile, Vi.”
“Huh! what’s a quarter of a mile after such a tramp as we have had?” came from Billie.
“And after such an experience,” added Laura.
“We’ll certainly have some story to tell.”
“I want something to eat first.”
“Yes, and dry clothes, too.”
“What a queer hut and what a queer man!”
“I’ve heard of people being lost before,” said Billie, as they ran up the steps that led to the handsomestdoor in the world, or at least so they thought it at that moment. “But now I know that what they said about it wasn’t half bad enough.”
“But not every one finds a hut and a funny man when they get lost,” said Vi.
“Well, you needn’t be so conceited about it,” said Laura, pausing with her hand on the door knob. “The girls probably won’t believe us when we tell them.”
But Laura was wrong. The girls did really believe the story of Hugo Billings and the hut and became tremendously excited about it. At first they were all for making up an expedition and going to see it—the only drawback being that the chums could not have directed them to it if they would.
And they would not have wished to, anyway. They had rather good reason to believe that Hugo Billings would not want a lot of curious girls spying about his quarters, and, being sorry for him and grateful to him for helping them out of their fix, they absolutely refused to have anything to do with the idea.
They were greeted with open arms on the night of their return. Miss Walters, the much-beloved head of Three Towers Hall, said that she had been just about to send out a searching party for them.
They were late for supper, but that only made their appetites better, and as they were favorites of the cook they were given an extra share ofeverything and ate ravenously, impatient of the questions flung at them by the curious girls.
“Thank goodness the Dill Pickles aren’t here,” Laura said to Billie between mouthfuls of pork chop. “Think of coming home withourappetites to the kind of dinners they used to serve us.”
“Laura! what a horrible thought,” cried Billie, her eyes dancing as she helped herself to two more biscuits. “That’s treason.”
For the “Dill Pickles” were two elderly spinsters who had been teachers at Three Towers Hall when Billie and her chums had first arrived. Their tartness and strictness and miserliness had made the life of the girls in the school uncomfortable for some time.
And then had come the climax. Miss Walters, having been called away for a week or two, Miss Ada Dill and Miss Cora Dill, disrespectfully dubbed by the girls the twin “Dill Pickles,” had things in their own hands and proceeded to make the life of the girls unbearable. They had taken away their liberty, and then had half starved them by cutting down on the meals until finally the girls had rebelled.
With Billie in the lead, they had marched out of Three Towers Hall one day, bag and baggage, to stay in a hotel in the town of Molata until Miss Walters should get back. Miss Walters, coming home unexpectedly, had met the girls in town, accompaniedthem back to Three Towers and, as one of the girls slangily described it, “had given the Dill Pickles all that was coming to them.”
In other words, the Misses Dill had been discharged and the girls had come off victorious. Now there were two new teachers in their place who were as different from the Dill Pickles as night is from day. All the girls loved them, especially a Miss Arbuckle who had succeeded Miss Cora Dill in presiding over the dining hall.
So it was to this that Laura had referred when she said, “Thank goodness the Dill Pickles are gone!”
After they had eaten all they could possibly contain, the girls retired to their dormitories, where they changed their clothes, still damp from their adventure, for comfortable, warm night gowns, and held court, all the girls gathering in their dormitory to hear of their adventures, for nearly an hour.
At the end of that time the bell for “lights-out” rang, and the chums found to their surprise that for once they were not sorry. What with the adventure itself and the number of questions they had answered, they were tired out and longed for the comfort of their beds.
“But do you suppose,” said Connie Danvers as she rose to go into her dormitory, which was across the hall, “that the man was really a little out of his head?”
“I think he was more than a little,” said Laura decidedly, as she dipped her face into a bowl of cold water. “I think he was just plain crazy.”
Connie Danvers was a very good friend of the chums, and one of the most popular girls in Three Towers Hall. Just now she looked a little worried.
“Goodness! first we have the Codfish,” she said, “and then you girls go and rake up a crazy man. We’ll be having a menagerie next!”
CHAPTER VMUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
It was the spring of the year, a time when every normal boy and girl becomes restless for new scenes, new adventures. The girls at Three Towers Hall heard the mysterious call and longed through hot days of study to respond to it.
The teachers felt the restlessness in the air and strove to keep the girls to their lessons by making them more interesting. But it was of no use. The girls studied because they had to, not, except in a few scattered cases, because they wanted to.
One of the exceptions to the rule was Caroline Brant, a natural student and a serious girl, who had set herself the rather hopeless task of watching over Billie Bradley and keeping her out of scrapes. For Billie, with her love of adventure and excitement, was forever getting into some sort of scrape.
But these days it would have taken half a dozen Caroline Brants to have kept Billie in the traces. Billie was as wild as an unbroken colt, and just as impatient of control. And Laura and Vi were almost as bad.
There was some excuse for the girls. In the first place, the spring term at Three Towers Hall was drawing to a close, and at the end of the spring term came—freedom.
But the thing that set their blood racing was the thought of what was in store for them after they had gained their freedom. Connie Danvers had given the girls an invitation to visit during their vacation her father’s bungalow on Lighthouse Island, a romantic spot off the Maine coast.
The prospect had appealed to the girls even in the dead of winter; but now, with the sweet scent of damp earth and flowering shrubs in the air, they had all they could do to wait at all.
The chums had written to their parents about spending their vacation on the island, and the latter had consented on one condition. And that condition was that the girls should make a good record for themselves at Three Towers Hall. And it is greatly to be feared that it was only this unreasonable—to the girls—condition that kept them at their studies at all.
It was Saturday morning, and Billie, all alone in one of the study halls, was finishing her preparation for Monday’s classes. She always got rid of this task on Saturday morning, so as to have her Saturday afternoon and Sunday free. She had never succeeded in winning Laura and Vi over to her method, so that on their part there was usuallya wild scramble to prepare Monday’s lessons on Sunday afternoon.
As Billie, books in hand and a satisfied feeling in her heart, came out of the study room, she very nearly ran into Miss Arbuckle. Miss Arbuckle seemed in a great hurry about something, and the tip of her nose and her eyes were red as though she had been crying.
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Billie, for Billie was not at all tactful when any one was in trouble. Her impulse was to jump in and help, whether one really wanted her help or not. But everybody that knew Billie forgave her her lack of tact and loved her for the desire to help.
So now Miss Arbuckle, after a moment of hesitation, motioned Billie into the study room, and, crossing over to one of the windows, stood looking out, tapping with her fingers on the sill.
“I’ve lost something, Billie,” she said, without looking around. “It may not seem much to you or to anybody else. But for me—well, I’d rather have lost my right hand.”
She looked around then, and Billie saw fresh moisture in her eyes.
“What is it?” she asked gently. “Perhaps I—we can help you find it.”
“I wish you could,” said Miss Arbuckle, with a little sigh. “But that would be too good to be true. It was only an old family album, Billie. But therewere pictures in it that I prize above everything I own. Oh, well,” she gave a little shrug of her shoulders as if to end the matter. “I’ll get over it. I’ve had to get over worse things. But,” she smiled and patted Billie’s shoulder fondly, “I didn’t mean to burden your young shoulders with my troubles. Just run along and forget all about it.”
Billie did run along, but she most certainly did not “forget all about it.”
“Funny thing to get so upset about,” she said to herself, as she slowly climbed the steps to her dormitory. “A picture album! I don’t believe I’d ever get my nose and eyes all red over one. Just the same, I’d like to find it and give it back to her. Good Miss Arbuckle! After the Dill Pickles, she seems like an angel.”
She was still smiling over the thought of what had happened to the Dill Pickles when she opened the door of the dormitory and came upon her chums.
Laura and Vi and a dark-haired, pink-cheeked girl were sitting on one of the beds in one corner of the dormitory, alternately talking and gazing dreamily out of the window to Lake Molata, where it gleamed and shimmered in the morning sunlight at the end of a sloping lawn.
The dark-haired, pink-cheeked girl was Rose Belser. Rose Belser, being jealous of Billie’s immense popularity at Three Towers Hall the termbefore, had done her best to get the new girl into trouble, only to be won over to Billie’s side in the end. Now she was as firm a friend of Billie’s as any girl in Three Towers Hall.
“Well!” was Laura’s greeting as Billie sauntered toward them. “Methinks ’tis time you arrived, sweet damsel. Goodness!” she added, dropping her lazy tone and sitting up with a bounce, “I don’t see why you have to go and spoil the whole morning with your beastly old studying. Think of the fun we could have had.”
“Well, but think of the fun we’re going to have this afternoon,” Billie flung back airily, stopping before the mirror to tuck some wisps of hair into place, while the girls, even Rose, who was as pretty as a picture herself, watched her admiringly. “It’s almost lunch time.”
“You don’t have to tell us that,” said Vi in an aggrieved tone. “Haven’t we been waiting for you all morning?”
“Oh, come on,” said Billie, as the lunch gong sounded invitingly through the hall. “Maybe when you’ve had something to eat you’ll feel better. Feed the beast——”
“Say, she’s calling us names again,” cried Laura, making a dive for Billie. But Billie was already flying down the steps two at a time, and when Billie once got a head start, no one, at least noone in Three Towers Hall, had a chance of catching up with her.
It seemed to be Billie’s day for bumping into people—for at the foot of the stairs she had to clutch the banister to keep from colliding with Miss Walters, the beautiful and much loved head of the school.
At Billie’s sudden appearance the latter seemed inclined to be alarmed, then her eyes twinkled, and as she looked at Billie she chuckled, yes, actually chuckled.
“Beatrice Bradley,” she said, with a shake of her head as she passed on, “I’ve done my best with you, but it’s of no use. You’re utterly incorrigible.”
Billie looked thoughtful as she seated herself at the table, and a moment later, under cover of the general conversation, she leaned over and whispered to Laura.
“Miss Walters said something funny to me,” she confided. “I’m not quite sure yet whether she was calling me names or not.”
“What did she say?” asked Laura, looking interested.
“She said I was incorrigible,” Billie whispered back.
“Incorrigible,” there was a frown on Laura’s forehead, then it suddenly cleared and she smiled beamingly.
“Why yes, don’t you remember?” she said. “Wehad it in English class the other day. Incorrigible means wicked, you know—bad. You can’t reform ’em, you know—incorrigibles.” The last word was mumbled through a mouthful of soup.
“Can’t reform ’em!” Billie repeated in dismay. “Goodness, do you suppose that’s what she really thinks of me?”
“I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” Laura said wickedly, and Billie would surely have thrown something at her if Miss Arbuckle’s eye had not happened at that moment to turn in her direction.
Miss Arbuckle’s eye brought to Billie’s mind the teacher’s trouble, and she confided it in a low tone to Laura.
“Humph,” commented Laura, her mind only on the fun they were going to have that afternoon, “I’m sorry, of course, but I don’t believe any old album would make me shed tears.”
“Don’t be so sure of that, Laura.”
“What? Cry over an old album?” and Laura looked her astonishment.
“But suppose the album had in it the pictures of those you loved very dearly—pictures perhaps of those that were dead and gone and pictures that you couldn’t replace?”
“Oh, well—I suppose that would be different. Did she say anything about the people?”
“She didn’t go into details, but she said they were pictures she prized above anything.”
“Oh, perhaps then that would make a difference.”
“I hope she gets the album back,” said Billie seriously.
Then Laura promptly forgot all about both Miss Arbuckle and the album.
A little while later the girls swung joyfully out upon the road, bound for town and shopping and perhaps some ice cream and—oh, just a jolly good time of the kind girls know so well how to have, especially in the spring of the year.
CHAPTER VIFOUND—ONE ALBUM
“I’m sorry Connie couldn’t come along,” said Laura, drinking in deep breaths of the fragrant air.
“Yes,” said Billie, her eyes twinkling. “She said she wished she hadn’t been born with a conscience.”
“A conscience,” said Vi innocently. “Why?”
“Because,” said Billie, her cheeks aglow with the heat and exercise, her brown hair clinging in little damp ringlets to her forehead, and her eyes bright with health and the love of life, “then she could have had a good time to-day instead of staying at home in a stuffy room and writing a cartload of letters. She says if she doesn’t write them, she’ll never dare face her friends when she gets home.”
“She’s a darling,” said Laura, executing a little skip in the road that sent the dust flying all about them. “Just think—if we hadn’t met her we wouldn’t be looking forward to Lighthouse Island and a dear old uncle who owns the light——”
“Anybody would think he was your uncle,” said Vi.
“Well, he might just as well be,” Laura retorted.“Connie says that he adopts all the boys and girls about the place.”
“And that they adopt him,” Billie added, with a nod. “He must be a darling. I’m just crazy to see him.”
Connie Danver’s Uncle Tom attended the lighthouse, and, living there all the year around, had become as much of a fixture as the island itself. Connie loved this uncle of hers, and had told the girls enough about him to rouse their curiosity and make them very eager to meet him.
The girls walked on in silence for a little way and then, as they came to a path that led into the woods, Laura stopped suddenly and said in a dramatic voice:
“Do you realize where we are, my friends? Do you, by any chance, remember a tall, thin, wild-eyed man?”
Did they remember? In a flash they were back again in a queer little hut in the woods, where a tall man stood and stared at them with strange eyes.
Laura and Vi started to go on, but Billie stood staring at the path with fascinated eyes.
“I wonder why,” she said, as she turned slowly away in response to the urging of the girls, “nothing ever seems the same in the sunlight. The other night when we were running along that path we were scared to death, and now——”
“You sound as if you’d like to stay scared todeath,” said Laura impatiently, for Laura had not Billie’s imagination.
“I guess I don’t like to be scared any more than any one else,” Billie retorted. “But Iwouldlike to see that man again. I wonder——” she paused and Vi prompted her.
“Wonder what?” she asked.
“Why,” said Billie, a thoughtful little crease on her forehead, “I was just wondering if we could find the little hut again if we tried.”
“Of course we couldn’t!” Laura was very decided about it. “We were lost, weren’t we? And when the man showed us the way back it was dark——”
“The only way I can see,” said Vi, who often had rather funny ideas, “would be to have one of us stand in the road and hold on to strings tied to the other two so that if they got lost——”
“The one in the road could haul ’em back,” said Laura sarcastically. “That’s a wonderful idea, Vi.”
“Well, Iwouldlike to see that man again,” sighed Billie. “He seemed so sad. I’m sure he was in trouble, and I’d so like to help him.”
“Yes and when you offered you nearly got your head bit off,” observed Laura.
Billie’s eyes twinkled.
“That’s what Daddy says always happens to people who try to help,” she said. “I feel awfullysorry for him, just the same,” she finished decidedly.
Then Laura did a surprising thing. She put an arm about Billie’s shoulders and hugged her fondly.
“Billie Bradley,” she said sadly, “I do believe you would feel sorry for a snake that bit you, just because it was only a snake.”
“Perhaps that’s why she lovesyou,” said Vi innocently, and scored a point. Laura looked as if she wanted to be mad for a minute, but she was not. She only laughed with the girls.
They had as good a time as they had expected to have in town that afternoon—and that is saying something.
First they went shopping. Laura had need of a ribbon girdle. Although they all knew that a blue one would be bought in the end, as blue was the color that would go best with the dress with which the girdle was to be worn, the merits and beauties of a green one and a lavender one were discussed and comparisons made with the blue one over and over, all from very love of the indecision and, more truly, the joy that looking at the dainty, pretty colors gave them.
“Well, I think this is the very best of all, Laura,” said Billie finally, picking up the pretty blue girdle with its indistinct pattern of lighter blue and white.
“Yes, it is a beauty,” replied Laura. “I’ll take that one,” she went on to the clerk.
After that came numerous smaller purchases until,as Vi said dolefully, all their money was gone except enough to buy several plates of ice cream apiece.
They were standing just outside the store where their last purchases had been made when Billie, looking down the street, gave a cry of delight.
“Look who’s coming!” she exclaimed.
“It’s the boys!” cried Vi. “Mercy, girls, we might just as well have spent the rest of our money, the boys will treat us to the ice cream.”
“Goodness, Vi! do you want to spend your money whether you get anything you really need or wish for or not?” inquired Billie, with a little gasp.
“What in the world is money for if not to spend?” asked Vi, making big and innocent eyes at Billie.
Just then the boys came within speaking distance.
“Well, this is what I call luck!” exclaimed Ferd Stowing.
“Yes,” added Teddy, putting his hand in his pocket, “just hear the money jingle. A nice big check from Dad in just appreciation of his absent son! What do you girls say to an ice-cream spree? No less than three apiece, with all this unwonted wealth.”
“Ice cream? I should say!” was Billie’s somewhat slangy acceptance.
“Teddy,” suddenly asked Laura, “how does it come that you have any money left from Dad’s check?”
“Check came just as we left the Academy, Captain Shelling cashed it for me, and we have just reached town.”
“Oh! Well, maybe I’ll find one, too, when we reach Three Towers.”
“So that’s it, is it, sister mine? Envy!”
After that they ate ice cream to repletion, and at last the girls decided that there was nothing much left to do but to go back to the school.
It was just as well that they had made this decision, for the sun was beginning to sink in the west and the supper hour at Three Towers Hall was rather early. As they started toward home, having said good-bye to the boys, the girls quickened their pace.
It was not till they were nearing the path which, to Billie at least, had been surrounded by a mysterious halo since the adventure of the other night that the girls slowed up. Then it was Billie who did the slowing up.
“Girls,” she said in a hushed voice, “I suppose you’ll laugh at me, but I’d just love to follow that path into the woods a little way. You don’t need to come if you don’t want to. You can wait for me here in the road.”
“Oh, no,” said Laura, with a little sigh of resignation. “If you are going to be crazy we might as well be crazy with you. Come on, Vi, if wedidn’t go along, she would probably get lost all over again—just for the fun of it.”
Billie made a little face at them and plunged into the woods. Laura followed, and after a minute’s hesitation Vi trailed at Laura’s heels.
They were so used to Billie’s sudden impulses that they had stopped protesting and merely went along with her, which, as Billie herself had often pointed out, saved a great deal of argument.
They might have saved themselves all worry on Billie’s account this time, though, for she had not the slightest intention of getting lost again—once was enough.
She went only as far as the end of the path, and when the other girls reached her she was peering off into the forest as if she hoped to see the mysterious hut—although she knew as well as Laura and Vi that they had walked some distance through the woods the other night before they had finally reached the path.
“Well, are you satisfied?” Laura asked, with a patient sigh. “If you don’t mind my saying it, I’m getting hungry.”
“Goodness! after all that ice cream?” cried Billie, adding with a little chuckle: “You’re luckier than I am, Laura. I feel as if I shouldn’t want anything to eat for a thousand years.”
She was just turning reluctantly to follow her chums back along the path when a dark, bulky-lookingobject lying in a clump of bushes near by caught her eye and she went over to examine it.
“Now what in the world——” Laura was beginning despairingly when suddenly Billie gave a queer little cry.
“Come here quick, girls!” she cried, reaching down to pick up the bulky object which had caught her attention. “I do believe—yes, it is—it must be——”
“Well, say it!” the others cried, peering impatiently over her shoulder.
“Miss Arbuckle’s album,” finished Billie.
CHAPTER VIISTRANGE ACTIONS
Instead of seeming excited, Laura and Vi stared. Vi had not even heard that Miss Arbuckle had lost an album, and Laura just dimly remembered Billie’s having said something about it.
But Billie’s eyes were shining, and she was all eagerness as she picked the old-fashioned volume up and began turning over the pages. She was thinking of poor Miss Arbuckle’s red nose and eyes of that morning and of how different the teacher’s face would look when she, Billie, returned the album.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” she said. “I felt awfully sorry for Miss Arbuckle this morning.”
“Well, I wish I knew what you were talking about,” said Vi plaintively, and Billie briefly told of her meeting with Miss Arbuckle in the morning and of the teacher’s grief at losing her precious album.
“Humph! I don’t see anything very precious about it,” sniffed Laura. “Look—the corners are all worn through.”
“Silly, it doesn’t make any difference how old it is,” said Vi as they started back along the path, Billie holding on tight to the book. “It may have pictures in it she wants to save. It may be—what is it they call ’em?—an heirloom or something. And Mother says heirlooms are precious.”
“Well, I know one that isn’t,” said Laura, with a little grimace. “Mother has a wreath made out of hair of different members of the family. She says it’s precious, too; but I notice she keeps it in the darkest corner of the attic.”
“Well, this isn’t a hair wreath, it’s an album,” Billie pointed out. “And I don’t blame Miss Arbuckle for not wanting to lose an album with family pictures in it.”
“But how did she come to lose it there?” asked Laura, as the road could be seen dimly through the trees. “The woods seem a funny place. Girls,” and Laura’s eyes began to shine excitedly, “it’s a mystery!”
“Oh, dear,” sighed Vi plaintively, “there she goes again. Everything has to be a mystery, whether it is or not.”
“But it is, isn’t it?” insisted Laura, turning to Billie for support. “A lady says she has lost an album. In a little while we find that same album——”
“I suppose it’s the same,” put in Billie, looking at the album as if it had not occurred to her beforethat this might not be Miss Arbuckle’s album, after all.
“Of course it is, silly,” Laura went on impatiently. “It isn’t likely that two people would be foolish enough to lose albums on the same day. If it had been a stick pin now, or a purse——”
“Yes, yes, go on,” Billie interrupted. “You were talking about mysteries.”
“Well, it is, isn’t it?” demanded Laura, becoming so excited she could not talk straight. “What was Miss Arbuckle doing in the woods with her album, in the first place?”
“She might have been looking at it,” suggested Vi mildly.
Billie giggled at the look Laura gave Vi.
“Yes. But may I ask,” said Laura, trying to appear very dignified, “why, if she only wanted tolookat the pictures, she couldn’t do it some place else—in her room, for instance?”
“Goodness, I’m not a detective,” said poor Vi. “If you want to ask any questions go and ask Miss Arbuckle. I didn’t lose the old album.”
Laura gave a sigh of exasperation.
“A person might as well try to talk to a pair of wooden Indians,” she cried, then turned appealingly to Billie. “Don’t you think there’s something mysterious about it, Billie?”
“Why, it does seem kind of queer,” Billie admitted, adding quickly as Laura was about to turnupon Vi with a whoop of triumph. “But I don’t think it’s very mysterious. Probably Miss Arbuckle just wanted to be alone or something, and so she brought the album out into the woods to look it over by herself. I like to do it sometimes myself—with a book I mean. Just sneak off where nobody can find me and read and read until I get so tired I fall asleep.”
“Well, but you can’t look at pictures in a shabby old album until you feel so tired you fall asleep,” grumbled Laura, feeling like a cat that has just had a saucer of rich cream snatched from under its nose. “You girls wouldn’t know a mystery if you fell over it.”
“Maybe not,” admitted Billie good-naturedly, her face brightening as she added, contentedly: “But I do know one thing, and that is that Miss Arbuckle is going to be very glad when she sees this old album again!”
And she was right. When they reached Three Towers Hall Laura and Vi went upstairs to the dormitory to wash up and get ready for supper while Billie stopped at Miss Arbuckle’s door, eager to tell her the good news at once.
She rapped gently, and, receiving no reply, softly pushed the door open. Miss Arbuckle was standing by the window looking out, and somehow Billie knew, even before the teacher turned around, that she had been crying again.
The tired droop of the shoulders, the air of discouragement—suddenly there flashed across Billie’s mind a different picture, the picture of a tall lank man with stooped shoulders and dark, deep-set eyes, looking at her strangely.
A puzzled little line formed itself across her forehead. Why, she thought, had Miss Arbuckle made her think of the man who called himself Hugo Billings and who lived in a hut in the woods?
Perhaps because they both seemed so very sad. Yes, that must be it. Then her face brightened as she felt the bulky album under her arm. Here was something that would make Miss Arbuckle smile, at least.
Billie spoke softly and was taken aback at the suddenness with which Miss Arbuckle turned upon her, regarding her with startled eyes.
For a moment teacher and pupil regarded each other. Then slowly a pitiful, crooked smile twitched Miss Arbuckle’s lips and her hand reached out gropingly for the back of a chair.
“Oh, it’s—it’s you,” she stammered, adding with an apologetic smile that made her look more natural: “I’m a little nervous to-day—a little upset. What is it, Billie? Why didn’t you knock?” The last words were said in Miss Arbuckle’s calm, slightly dry voice, and Billie began to feel more natural herself. She had been frightened when Miss Arbuckle swung around upon her.
“I did,” she answered. “Knock, I mean. But you didn’t hear me. I found something of yours, Miss Arbuckle.” Her eyes fell to the volume she still carried under her arm, and Miss Arbuckle, following the direction of her gaze, recognized her album.
She gave a little choked cry, and her face grew so white that Billie ran to her, fearing she hardly knew what. But she had no need to worry, for although fear sometimes kills, joy never does, and in a minute Miss Arbuckle’s eager hands were clutching the volume, her fingers trembling as they rapidly turned over the leaves.
“Yes, here they are, here they are,” she cried suddenly, and Billie, peeping over her shoulder, looked down at the pictured faces of three of the most beautiful children she had ever seen. “My darlings, my darlings,” Miss Arbuckle was saying over and over again. Then suddenly her head dropped to the open page and her shoulders shook with the sobs that tore themselves from her.
Billie turned away and tiptoed across the room, her own eyes wet, but she stopped with her hand on the door.
“My little children!” Miss Arbuckle cried out sobbingly. “My precious little babies! I couldn’t lose your pictures after losing you. They were all I had left of you, and I couldn’t lose them, I couldn’t—I couldn’t——”
Billie opened the door, and, stepping out into the hall, closed it softly after her. She brushed her hand across her eyes, for there were tears in them, and her feet felt shaky as she started up the stairs.
“Well, I—I never!” she told herself unsteadily. “First she nearly scares me to death. And then she cries and talks about her children, and says she’s lost them. Goodness, I shouldn’t wonder but that Laura is right after all. There certainly is something mighty strange about it.”
And when, a few minutes later, she told the story to her chums they agreed with her, even Vi.
“Why, I never heard of such a thing,” said the latter, looking interested. “You say she seemed frightened when you went in, Billie?”
“Terribly,” answered Billie. “It seemed as if she might faint or something.”
“And the children,” Laura mused delightedly aloud. “I’m going to find out who those children are and why they are lost if I die doing it.”
“Now look who she thinks she is,” jeered Vi.
“Who?” asked Laura with interest.
“The Great Lady Detective,” said Vi, and Laura’s chest, if one takes Billie’s word for it, swelled to about three times its natural size.
“That’s all right,” said Laura, in response to the girls’ gibes. “I’ll get in some clever work, with nothing but a silly old photograph album as a clue,or a motive—oh, well, I don’t know just what the album is yet, but an album is worse than commonplace, it is plumb foolish as a center around which to work. Oh, ho! Great Lady Detective! Solves most marvelous and intricate mystery with only the slightest of clues, an old photograph album, to point the way! Oh, ho!”
CHAPTER VIIIAN INVITATION
The girls could never have told exactly why, but they kept the mystery of the album and Miss Arbuckle’s strange actions to themselves, with one exception.
They did confide their secret to fluffy-haired, blue-eyed Connie Danvers. For they had long ago adopted Connie as one of themselves and were beginning to feel that they had known her all their lives.
Connie had been interested enough in their story to satisfy even the chums and had urged Billie to describe the pretty children in the album over whom Miss Arbuckle had cried.
Billie tried, but, having seen the pictures but once, it was hardly to be expected that she would be able to give the girls a very clear description of them.
It was good enough to satisfy Connie, however, who, in her enthusiasm, went so far as to suggest that they form a Detective Club.
This the girls might have done if it had not been for an interruption in the form of Chet Bradley,Teddy Jordon and their chum, Ferd Stowing.
The boys had entered Boxton Military Academy at the time the girls had entered Three Towers Hall, and the boys were as enthusiastic about their academy as the girls were about their beloved school.
The head of Boxton Military Academy was Captain Shelling, a splendid example of army officer whom all the students loved and admired. They did not know it, but there was not one of the boys in the school who did not hope that some day he might be like Captain Shelling.
Now, as the spring term was drawing to a close, there were great preparations being made at the Academy for the annual parade of cadets.
The girls knew that visitors were allowed, and they were beginning to wonder a little uneasily whether they were to be invited or not when one afternoon the boys turned up and settled the question for them very satisfactorily.
It was Saturday afternoon, just a week after the finding of Miss Arbuckle’s album, and the girls, Laura, Billie, Vi and Connie, were wandering arm in arm about the beautiful campus of Three Towers Hall when a familiar hail came to them from the direction of the road.
“It’s Chet,” said Billie.
“No, it isn’t—it’s Teddy,” contradicted Laura.
“It’s both of ’em,” added Vi.
“No, you are both wrong,” said Connie, gazing eagerly through the trees. “Here they come, girls. Look, there are four of them.”
“Yes, there are four of them,” mocked Laura, mischievous eyes on Connie’s reddening face. “The third is Ferd Stowing, of course. And I wonder, oh, I wonder, who the fourth can be!”
“Don’t be so silly! I think you’re horrid!” cried Connie, which only made Laura chuckle the more.
For while they had been at the Academy, the boys had made a friend. His name was Paul Martinson, and he was tall and strongly built and—yes, even Billie had to admit it—almost as good looking as Teddy!
If Billie said that about any one it was pretty sure to be true. For Billie and Teddy Jordon had been chums and playmates since they could remember, and Billie had always been sure that Teddy must be the very best looking boy in the world, not even excepting her brother Chet, of whom she was very fond.
But Billie was not the only one who had found Paul Martinson good looking. Connie had liked him, and had said innocently one day after the boys had gone that Paul Martinson looked like the hero in a story book she was reading.
The girls had giggled, and since then Laura had made poor Connie’s life miserable—or so Conniedeclared. She could not have forgotten Paul Martinson, even if she had wanted to.
As for Paul Martinson, he had shown a liking for Billie that somehow made Teddy uncomfortable. Teddy was very much surprised to find how uncomfortable it did make him. Billie was a “good little chum and all that, but that didn’t say that another fellow couldn’t speak to her.” But just the same he had acted so queerly two or three times lately that Billie had bothered him exceedingly asking him what the matter with him was and telling him to “cheer up, it wasn’t somebody’s funeral, you know.” Billie had been puzzled over his answer to that. He had muttered something about “it’s not anybody’s funeral yet, maybe, but everything had to start sometime.”
When Billie had innocently told Laura about it she was still more puzzled at the way Laura had acted. Instead of being sensible, she had suddenly buried her face in the pillow—they had been sitting on Billie’s bed, exchanging confidences—and fairly shook with laughter.
“Well, what in the world——” Billie had begun rather resentfully, when Laura had interrupted her with an hysterical: “For goodness sake, Billie, I never thought you could be so dense. But you are. You’re absolutely crazy, and so is Teddy, and so is everybody!”
And after that Billie never confided any of Teddy’s sayings to Laura again.
On this particular afternoon it did not take the girls long to find out that the boys had some good news to tell them.
“Come on down to the dock,” Teddy said, taking hold of Billie’s arm and urging her down toward the lake as he spoke. “Maybe we can find some canoes and rowboats that aren’t working.”
But when they reached the dock there was never a craft of any kind to be seen except those far out upon the glistening water of the lake. Of course the beautiful weather was responsible for this, for all the girls who had not lessons to do or errands in town had made a bee line—as Ferd Stowing expressed it—straight down to the lake.
“Oh, well, this will do,” said Teddy, sitting down on the edge of the little dock so that his feet could hang over and reaching up a hand for Billie. “Come along, everybody. We can look at the water, anyway.”
The girls and boys scrambled down obediently and there was great excitement when Connie’s foot slipped and she very nearly tumbled into the lake. Paul Martinson steadied her, and she thanked him with a little blush that made Laura look at her wickedly.
“How beautifully pink your complexion is in the warm weather, Connie,” she said innocently, addingwith a little look that made Connie want to shake her: “It can’t be anythingbutthe heat, can it? You haven’t a fever, or something?”
“No. But you’ll have something beside a fever,” threatened Connie, “if you don’t keep still.”
“Say, stop your rowing, girls, and listen to me,” Teddy interrupted, picking a pebble from the dock and throwing it far out into the gleaming water, where it dropped with a little splash. “Our famous parade of cadets comes off next week. You’re going to be on deck, aren’t you?”
“We might,” said Billie, with a demure little glance at him, “if somebody would only ask us!”