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

“Yes,” said Laura, stuffing her hands deeper into her pockets. “He seems dreadfully sorry about poor little Peter. I heard him mumble something about troubles always coming in a heap.”

“Oh,” said Billie, with a big long sigh, “if somebody could only stumble across those inventions someway or other! Then we could all be happy again.”

For a moment her classmates stared at Billie blankly. They had all but forgotten about the invention. Somehow, Mrs. Haddon’s tale of a nearly won fortune had seemed unreal and vague to them – almost like a fairy story. And now here was Billie bringing it all up again and even talking about finding that knitting machine model!

“If it doesn’t always take you to think up impossible things, Billie Bradley,” said Vi.

“Just the same,” Laura spoke up unexpectedly, “you must admit that lots of times Billie has done what we would think was impossible to do.”

“Goodness, have you got ’em, too?” asked Vi, with a giggle. “We all know Billie’s a wonder, but I don’t think she is going to find an invention that has been missing for a long time. Probably it wouldn’t be any good, anyway. All rusted and everything.”

“That wouldn’t make any difference,” Billie pointed out promptly. “As long as they had the model to copy from they could make any number of new machines just like it.”

“All right, rave on, Macduff!” cried Laura, who was just beginning to read Shakespeare and who annoyed the other girls by insisting upon quoting him – incorrectly – upon all occasions. “If you can find this old thing and get a fortune out of it for Mrs. Haddon and the kiddies and twenty thousand nice little dollars for yourself, honey, nobody’ll be gladder than me.”

“I,” corrected Violet sternly. “Don’t you know me is bad grammar?”

“Well, me’s a bad girl,” said Laura irrepressibly, and the girls giggled.

A few minutes later they came within sight of the school and found to their dismay that it was lunch hour.

“Do you mean to say we have been gone all morning?” cried Laura, stopping short at the familiar sight of the girls pouring out on the campus for a breath of air before their studies should commence again. “Goodness, Miss Walters will murder us.”

“Oh, come on,” cried Billie, hurrying the girls along. “Haven’t we been on an errand of mercy – and everything? She can’t kill us for that, even if we were a long time about it.”

Greetings and laughing gibes were flung at the girls as they hurried across the snow-covered campus, but they did not stop to answer. They wanted to see Miss Walters, explain why they were so late, and get a bite of something to eat before the afternoon classes began.

They had almost reached the door when a voice called to Billie from overhead. She looked up unsuspectingly and received an avalanche of snow right in the face, almost blinding her and sending her staggering back against her chums.

Sputtering and choking, she dashed the snow from her eyes and looked up to see who had done such a mean thing. There at a window just over her head was the grinning face of Amanda Peabody. In a flash Billie realized that it had been Amanda who had pushed the snow from the window ledge upon her.

“Want some more?” asked that disagreeable person in response to Billie’s stare. “There’s just a little bit left,” and she made a gesture as if to push the rest of the snow from the windowsill down upon Billie’s upturned face.

But Billie did not wait to see whether she would really have done it. With a cry she made for the door of the school, pushing through a group of the girls who had gathered at the first sign of a fracas. Laura and Vi followed, fuming.

As usual, instead of staying and facing the consequences of her own deeds, Amanda tried to get away. But Billie was too quick for her. The former reached the door of the room just as Amanda darted through it, bent upon escape.

Her eyes blazing, Billie seized the girl’s arm and hurried her through the hall, Laura and Vi assisting, and a delighted crowd following close behind.

“You let me go – you big cowards, you!” spluttered Amanda, almost crying with rage and fright. “You let me go, Billie Bradley! I’ll tell Miss Walters.”

“Go ahead and tell Miss Walters, you miserable sneak!” cried Billie, giving the girl a contemptuous shake. “But you won’t tell her till I’m through with you.”

“What are you going to do?” whined Amanda, too scared now even to bluster. “I won’t do it again, honest I won’t. Only let me go.”

“Don’t you do it, Billie,” cried one of the girls in the following crowd. “Don’t let her off so easy.”

But Billie had no intention of letting her enemy off easily. Having now reached the outside door, she shoved it open, at the same time motioning to Vi and Laura to let go of Amanda.

Then she dragged the whimpering, whining girl over to a spot where the wind had formed the snow into a small drift. Into this she flung the protesting girl, and the next instant was upon her, washing her face with the snow, and it is safe to say that no girl ever had her face so thoroughly washed before. And the crowd of girls behind Billie cheered her on gleefully.

There is no telling just how long Billie might have kept it up, for she was enjoying herself immensely, if Laura had not brought her to her senses. The latter leaned down, took a firm grip of the belt on Billie’s coat and jerked her to her feet.

“Better let her go,” she warned. “We will have Miss Walters or one of the teachers out here in a minute. Come on, Billie. She’s had enough.”

So Billie reluctantly stepped back while Amanda picked herself out of the snow, wiped her red and dripping face on her sleeve, and pushed through the laughing, mocking crowd of girls toward the school.

She stopped just before she reached the door, however, and faced her tormentors, her face distorted with rage.

“You think you’re smart, all of you!” she cried furiously, then added, as her eyes fell on Billie, who had drawn a handkerchief from her pocket and was wiping her hands carefully. “And you, Billie Bradley, standing there grinning! Some day I’ll make you grin out of the other side of your mouth. Just wait!”

“Would you like your face washed again?” Billie demanded, darting forward threateningly. “Come on, let’s get it over with – ”

But Amanda did not wait for the threat to be carried out. She scuttled precipitately into the Hall amid delighted giggles from the girls.

Amanda, fairly choking with rage at the laughter, stopped and shook her fist in the direction of it. Then, with all sorts of plans in her heart for “getting even,” she went on toward the dormitory.

CHAPTER VIII – JUST LIKE BILLIE!

Several days followed during which the girls settled down earnestly to their studies. For scholarship was held very high at Three Towers Hall, and any one who did not stand well in class was apt to find herself not only in ill favor with the teachers but with the students as well.

The girls had reported to Miss Walters the result of their visit to Polly Haddon, and the principal had seemed unusually interested and sympathetic.

“Now that you girls have taken the Haddon family under your wing,” she had said, smiling at the chums, “I think we shall have to see the thing through – at least until the mother is strong enough to begin work again. But in the meantime,” she had added, with a nod of the head that meant dismissal, “I don’t want interest in the Haddon family to make my girls neglect their studies. I expect great things of you this year.”

And so the girls, “feeling warm all over,” as they always did after a talk with Miss Walters, went back to their work, confident in the thought that the Haddons would not be left to starve, at least.

“Saturday we will go over ourselves and see how little Peter is,” said Billie, as, pencil in hand, she prepared to wade into a geometry problem. “Listen, Laura,” she added, looking up at her friend hopefully, “if you will help me with this geometry I’ll coach you in history. Is it a go?”

Laura declared it was a “go,” and so they settled down to work. But no amount of work could keep their thoughts from straying time and again to the Haddon family and the mystery of the stolen invention.

As the girls who have read the former adventures of Billie Bradley already know, Billie and her chums had been admitted to the “Ghost Club,” a secret society to which only the most popular girls and those who stood highest in their studies were admitted.

The membership had never exceeded fifteen, for the girls knew that to have too large a membership would only cheapen the club. Rose Belser was the president of it, and Connie Danvers and several other of the girls’ good friends were members. Caroline Brant had been asked to join long before, but had refused because she thought it would take too much time from her studies.

Last year’s Commencement had taken two of the club’s members, so that now the girls were watching the freshmen for good material. They were very careful in choosing, however, for it was far easier to get members into the club than it was to get them out.

The club was to have its first real meeting in two weeks, and it was at that meeting that the names of prospective members were to be tentatively submitted to the president. After that, a period of close watching, and then – the fun of initiations.

But first came news that ran through the Hall like wildfire. Some of the boys from Boxton Military Academy were coming over to the big hill behind the Three Towers Hall for the first real sledding of the year, and they had invited as many of the girls as they knew – and their friends – to meet them there.

Chet and Teddy and Ferd were coming over, of course, and as the day approached, anticipation grew accordingly until the girls could think and talk of nothing but the fun they were going to have.

“I wonder if Teddy will bring Paul Martinson with him,” said Vi, after trying vainly for half an hour to fix her mind on an essay she must hand in the next morning. “He’s ever so much fun, don’t you think?”

It was in Paul Martinson’s motor boat, which he had named the Shelling in honor of Captain Shelling, who was master of the Military Academy, that the boys had visited the girls on Lighthouse Island the summer before.

Paul Martinson was a splendid-looking, fine boy whom all the girls liked – Rose Belser, in particular – but who, himself, seemed to prefer Billie. Like Teddy, Paul thought that Billie was the “very best sport” he knew, and declared that “a fellow can have more fun with her any day than he can with another boy.”