Billie Bradley and Her Classmates: or, The Secret of the Locked Tower

“Is he very bad?” asked Billie, turning to weary-eyed Polly Haddon.

“The doctor says he almost surely will die,” answered the latter in a toneless voice. “He has just one chance out of a hundred.”

And as though speaking the doctor’s name had brought him there, the big man himself entered at that moment and the girls took that opportunity to say good-bye.

“Poor little Peter,” sighed Billie, as they walked slowly homeward. “I suppose if he dies poor Mrs. Haddon will nearly die too.”

“I wish there was something we could do,” said Vi, frowning.

“I don’t know what more we could do than we have done,” said Laura gloomily.

“Except,” said Billie thoughtfully, her eyes fixed on the far horizon, “find that invention of hers. I imagine that would make her so happy that she might even persuade poor little Peter to live.”

“Good gracious!” cried Laura, throwing up her hands in a despairing gesture. “She’s raving again, girls, she’s raving again!”

Billie laughed, but her eyes were still very thoughtful.

But the holiday season was upon them and it was impossible for the girls to be gloomy or unhappy for very long. They wished with all their hearts that Polly Haddon and her pathetic little brood might be made happy and prosperous once more, but even while they were wishing they could not shake off the exultant thought that Christmas was coming. And Christmas to most of them meant home and family and turkeys and cranberry sauce and presents – oh, oodles of presents!

“No holiday quite as good as good old Christmas,” observed Laura, gaily, as she danced around with a package she had just been doing up in a red ribbon.

“I’m with you on that,” declared Billie. “Oh, do you know, sometimes I can hardly wait until Christmas comes!”

“But you’ll wait just the same,” drawled Vi. “We all will.”

“It’s waiting that makes it worth while,” declared Billie. “It’s like the small boy and the circus. Tell him in the morning that you will take him in the afternoon and it doesn’t amount to much. But tell him a month ahead and he’ll get a whole month’s fun out of it before it comes off.”

“All right, Billie, I’ll tell you a secret,” whispered Vi, with a twinkle in her eyes. “About a year from now we’ll have another Christmas. Now is your time to start thinking about it.” And then there were giggles all around.

“I’ll wait for one Christmas to be over before I think of the next,” declared Billie.

Billie had asked Connie Danvers to come home with her for over the holidays, but Connie, after, writing eagerly home for permission, had had to refuse the invitation. Mrs. Danvers thanked Mrs. Bradley and Billie, but there was to be a big reunion of the Danvers family that Christmas and they had all counted on having Connie with them. If Billie could come home with Connie for Christmas – but here Billie shook her head decidedly, though the invitation was an enticing one. She knew that her mother would certainly want her at home for the most wonderful day in all the year.

And so when the time came, the classmates went their several ways after many fond embraces had been exchanged – to say nothing of various mysterious little green- and red-ribboned parcels.

The Christmas spirit is a wonderful thing, intangible, yet so real that even the most hardened old reprobate will thrill to the magic of it. And as these girls were neither hardened nor reprobates, they were kept in a continual state of excitement and joyful anticipation for two whole weeks before the great day arrived.

Ever since the opening of Three Towers Hall in the fall, the girls had used their spare moments to sew on little mysterious things which were immediately hidden upon the arrival of any of their fellow students, and now these same pieces of needlework began to blossom forth in gay be-ribboned boxes that passed between the girls in a continual stream.

Sometimes one would be found between the sheets of a girl’s bed when she jumped in at night and the touch of it would elicit a muffled shriek, to be followed by hysterical giggles when the gift was pulled from its hiding place and disclosed in all its glory to be admired and exclaimed over by the girls who had not been lucky enough to bark their shins on gifts of their own.

And sometimes another be-ribboned parcel would find its way into the stocking of a lucky maiden while she slept or be discovered in an out-of-the-way corner of her desk, nearly covered by books and papers.

And as the time drew still nearer, even interest in their studies flagged, and the teachers, wisely forbearing to force them, entered into the fun themselves, knowing that one could not study much while the Christmas cheer was in the air.

The girls had fondly hoped that Teddy and Chet and Ferd would be able to make the return trip with them, but as Boxton Academy did not close for the holidays until the day after the official closing of Three Towers, the girls were forced to give up the idea.

“Oh, well,” Billie said resignedly, “as long as they get there for Christmas it will be time enough.”

The day of release came at last and found the three North Bend girls doing a two-step of impatience on the station platform, waiting for the train, which was already half an hour late.

“Goodness, but your bag looks stuffed, Billie,” remarked Laura, stopping before Billie’s big suitcase whose bulging sides did look as though they might burst at any moment and disgorge the contents.

“It has twenty presents in it,” confided Billie, surveying her fat property with a loving eye. “I only hope it holds out till we get home, that’s all!”

Then the train puffed around the bend and slowed up to the station. And several hours later three very much flushed, very much excited, and very pretty young girls popped off the train at North Bend and straight into the arms of their doting families.

“Merry Christmas!” they cried to every one in general and no one in particular. “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Oh, isn’t it glorious to be at home!”

The boys arrived the next day, and they all had a great reunion at Billie’s home, where they exchanged presents and talked in hushed tones of what they hoped that Santa Claus would bring them – to-morrow! For this was Christmas Eve!

But the party broke up soon, and they all went to bed early so that they could get up at six o’clock the next morning – at the very latest.

Oh, the fun of anticipating and the joy of Christmas Day. First of all, the bulging stocking with its lumps of coal and pieces of carefully wrapped sugar with really pretty things stuck in between.

Then the mad rush for the Christmas tree and the admiring exclamations over its glittering beauty. And then – the opening of the gay, be-ribboned boxes. The laughter, the joy, the tears, as each little parcel disclosed something prettier or funnier or dearer than the last. It was all so wonderful that it was a pity it could not have lasted forever.

Then, after Christmas, one glorious, ecstatic week of fun that passed like a day. There were dances and parties and sleighrides and so many other festivities that there was hardly a minute of the day that was not accounted for.

It was not till the week was almost over that the girls thought penitently of the Haddons.

“I wonder,” said Billie, as she turned over and over in her fingers a ten dollar gold piece that had been a gift from an aunt, “what kind of Christmas poor little Peter has had.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Billie!” Laura replied a little impatiently, “what is the use of spoiling all our fun by bringing up the unhappiness of some one else? We can’t help it if the Haddons haven’t had as nice a Christmas as we have. We certainly have done all we could.”

But Vi had been eyeing Billie’s gold piece, and suddenly she had a bright idea all her own.

“Listen,” she said, pulling out her pocket book and fumbling in it eagerly. She brought out a glistening five dollar gold piece. “We all got a little money in gold this Christmas. Suppose we do it up in a box and leave it at the Haddons’ door when we get back. We have enough money to get along with for the rest of the term, anyway.”

For a moment Laura looked a little undecided, but Billie jumped up, ran over to Vi and hugged her.

“You’re a perfect angel!” she cried. “That’s just exactly what I was thinking myself. Only I wasn’t going to ask you girls. I was just going to leave mine and say nothing about it.”

“Oh, well,” grumbled Laura, taking her own bright coin from its hiding place and handing it over reluctantly. “If you girls are going to be foolish I suppose I’ve got to be too. Only it’s no joke,” she added, in a plaintive tone that made the girls giggle, “when you think of all the sodas and candy it would buy!”

At last the long anticipated holidays were at an end and after a few days of readjustment at the school, the classmates settled down to work in earnest. For the rest of the semester was crowded with work and the prizes were held out as a glittering bait to spur them on to fresh endeavor.

Only once, after their return to the Hall, the girls found time to run over to see the Haddons, hoping to be able to hide the generous gift they had decided to make in some inconspicuous place where it would not be discovered until they had had time to make their escape.

Polly Haddon seemed very glad indeed to see them, but she had no good news to report of Peter. He was still very low, but the doctor, great man that he was, was bending every energy to bring him through.

“But he will die,” said the mother, despairingly. “There is so little left of him now that I wonder that every breath he draws is not his last. Oh, my little boy! My poor little boy! I’ll not let him be taken from me!”

They comforted her as best they could, and then Billie, to the astonishment of her chums, began asking questions about the knitting machinery model, the disappearance of which had so changed life for this distracted woman.

“Was the model large or was it small, so that it could easily be stolen and hidden away?” she asked, while Polly Haddon looked up at her with something like surprise in her black eyes.

“It was large,” she answered. “And rather heavy. It could not be easily stolen, and neither could it have been hidden away in any small place. That is why we wondered. But why do you ask?”