won’t take any chances on her being too proud to accept it,” said Billie decidedly, adding with a chuckle: “We’ll do the way the boys used to do on Hallowe’en, ring the bell and run.”
They had no other chance to talk, for in a minute they were surrounded by about a dozen of their classmates who all began scolding them at once about running away and demanded to know where they had been, so that plans for the Haddons were pushed temporarily into the background.
Laughing and shouting to each other the girls took off their skates and scrambled up the long terraced hill that led to Three Towers.
If the Hall and its surroundings were beautiful in the summer time, it was even more attractive in the winter. The ivy that covered the green-gray stone of the building was now frosted white with snow and ice, and this, catching the ruddy gleam of the afternoon sun, gave the Hall the appearance of a great, sparkling jewel.
The three towers which gave the school its name made the place seem like some castle of old, and the surrounding trees and shrubbery, heavily coated with snow and icicles, gave to the old building just the air of mystery that it needed.
The beauty of the familiar place struck Billie afresh, and she stopped short suddenly and gazed up at it with loving eyes.
“Isn’t it lovely to have a place like this to come home to?” she said, as the girls looked at her inquiringly, “when you are tired and cold and – ”
“Hungry,” finished Laura, giving her a shove. “Giddap, Billie, you’re slowing down the works.”
“Slang again,” sighed Vi, plaintively, as Billie obligingly “giddaped.” “If I should tell Miss Walters – ”
“You would never live to tell another tale,” prophesied Laura, amid a gale of laughter from the girls. “Two sneaks and tattletales are enough,” she added significantly, as she caught sight of Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks walking a little ahead of them.
“I wonder where Connie and Nellie have kept themselves,” said Billie, as she with the other girls crowded through the wide door of the Hall.
“They were up in the dorm, cramming for the exams when I saw them last,” said a tall girl at Billie’s elbow. She had evidently not been with the girls on the lake, for she wore no coat or hat and she carried a book under each arm as though she also had been studying.
“Oh, hello, Carol!” greeted Billie, putting an arm about the tall girl and sweeping her toward the stairs. “So you’ve been grinding away as usual when you ought to have been out getting some good fresh air. My, you look as pale as a ghost.”
For the tall girl, so studiously inclined, was none other than Caroline Brant, who had been such a good friend to Billie upon her arrival at Three Towers Hall the year before. The girls were all fond of Caroline, in spite of the undeniable fact that she was one of those usually despised students commonly known as “grinds.”
“You know I don’t skate,” Caroline said in response to Billie’s accusation. “And I never could see why people prefer freezing their toes and noses to staying comfortably indoors.”
“You’re an old lamb,” said Billie with a squeeze. “But there are lots of things that you never will see!”
As Caroline had predicted, the chums found Connie Danvers and Nellie Bane in the dormitory, curled up uncomfortably on the bed, heads bent disconsolately over two thick and bulky history books.
When the door burst open and the chums swung into the room, skates slung over shoulders, eyes bright and cheeks glowing from exercise, the two on the bed flung away their books and looked despairingly at the newcomers.
“Great heavens, here they are back already,” cried Connie, running her hands wildly through her fluffy hair. “And I haven’t learned more than five dates so I can say them straight.”
“And that’s just five more than I have learned,” cried Billie gayly, dropping her skates in a corner and flinging herself on the edge of the bed. “Come closer, girls,” she added, lowering her voice to a mysterious whisper while Nellie and Connie wriggled over to her. “I would whisper in thine ear. We have met with an adventure!”
CHAPTER V – BEARDING THE LION
The one word “adventure” was enough to make the girls all interest at once. Caroline Brant wedged herself into a square inch of space on the bed between Connie and the bedpost, and as Rose Belser came in at that moment the girls motioned her to join them.
“What’s up?” asked Rose, flinging off her cap and scarf as she came. “Billie been getting into mischief again? Or is it only trouble this time?”
“Trouble, I guess,” said Billie, and then she told them the astonishing tale of what had happened that afternoon. But instead of being interested as she had expected them to be, the girls actually seemed disappointed.
“Well, was that all you had to tell us?” asked Connie, when she had finished. “I’m surprised at you, Billie. I thought you had really done something exciting.”
“Yes,” added Rose, in her aggravating little drawl, as she rose to get ready for dinner, “it was awfully good of you to rescue those three annoying little brats and return them to their distracted mother and all that. But I don’t see anything dreadfully hair-raising about it.”
Rose read books that were too old for her and ran with girls who were too old for her and so she herself contrived to seem much older than she was. And sometimes Billie found this manner extremely irritating, in spite of the fact that she and Rose were friends – now.
“I suppose it doesn’t seem very exciting to you,” she said, as she pulled off her cap and unwound the muffler from about her neck. “But I presume you would be a little bit more interested if it was youwho didn’t have enough to eat.”
“Don’t be mad at us, Billie,” Connie begged, patting Billie’s hand soothingly. “Of course we all feel sorry for the poor little kiddies and their mother and we want to help them all we can. But you can’t blame us for being disappointed when you said you had had an adventure.”
“I wonder if you would call it an adventure,” mused Billie, more to herself than to them, “if one of us should find that stolen invention and claim the twenty thousand dollars reward for it!”
Her classmates stopped what they were doing and stared at her.
“Wh – what did you say?” demanded Connie.
“You heard me,” said Billie, with a grin.
“But, Billie, you know that’s absurd,” said Rose, in her best drawl. “How could we possibly hope to find a thing that has been missing for a couple of years?”
“It may be absurd,” said Billie good-naturedly, pulling the ribbon from her curls and brushing them vigorously. “I think it sounds foolish myself. But while there’s life, there’s hope. Hand me that comb, will you, Vi?”
A few minutes later the big gong sounded through the halls, announcing gratefully to the hungry girls that dinner was ready. And now that the vinegary Misses Dill had gone, delight reigned supreme in the dining hall.
The girls had all they could possibly eat of good satisfying food and they were allowed to chatter as much as they would as long as they did not become too noisy.
But although they had chicken for dinner and cranberry sauce and creamed cauliflower, things all of which she especially liked, Billie enjoyed it less than any meal she had ever eaten.
Again and again before her eyes arose the reproachful images of the three little Haddons, undersized, undernourished, half-starved.
She could hardly wait until dessert had been served, and then, with a murmured word to Laura and Vi, she excused herself from the table and went in search of Miss Walters.
She found that lady in the act of drinking her after-dinner coffee in the privacy of her own little domain.
Miss Walters had a suite of three rooms all to herself: