Billie Bradley and the School Mystery: or, The Girl From Oklahoma

The saleswoman threw Billie a startled glance, that at once gave place to eager hopefulness. Edina’s glance was also startled – and hopeful.

“Dare I?” she breathed. “I never had so many clothes in all my life before!”

“That’s why you need them now,” said Billie cheerfully. “It gives a girl no end of confidence to have a complete wardrobe. And I’d add a party dress, or two, if I were you. We have school hops in the gym, you know, and once in a while the boys at Boxton give a dance. Yes, you will need at least two party frocks.”

Edina had surrendered completely to Billie’s guidance. She did not protest when the saleswoman – voluble now, and almost oppressively anxious to please – disappeared and a moment or two later reappeared with a mass of color and fluff over her arm.

Billie gave the frocks one glance and waved them aside.

“Something plainer,” she said to the saleswoman, disregarding Edina’s protests. “Something that depends entirely on color and line for its effect. We can’t have Edina here swamped with fluffy ruffles and bead embroidery. It isn’t her type.”

“But I liked them,” Edina protested, when the saleswoman had retreated uncomplainingly with her burden of fluff. “They were purty – almost as purty – ”

“Pretty,” corrected Billie.

“Pretty,” Edina accepted the correction docilely, “as the undies.”

“Pretty – but not for you,” said Billie decidedly. “Trust me, Edina. I am going to make you a personage at Three Towers Hall.”

Billie’s enthusiasm was difficult to resist. Edina did not try to resist it. She permitted herself to be swept along by the new and entirely blissful experience of being able to buy all the lovely things she wanted at one time. The long-starved, demanding girlhood in Edina was finding expression.

The saleswoman returned with an entirely different collection of evening frocks which the critical Billie was good enough to approve.

“The coral one would look gorgeous on you Edina and the yellow taffeta. Try them.”

Edina obeyed and was captivated. She insisted that she would take both the frocks of Billie’s choice but remained adamant in her intention to try on nothing more.

“If I try ’em on, I’ll buy them,” she said, showing a grain of the good horse sense she had undoubtedly inherited from “Paw.” “I’ve got more now than I could wear out in a lifetime of trying – unless I was twins.”

Billie gave in with a sigh and a giggle.

“We’ve got to get hats and shoes and stockings, anyway,” she mused. “Suppose we’ve got to stop somewhere.”

The saleswoman, feeling that this was her lucky day, offered a bright suggestion.

“I can have hats sent up here to match the frocks – ”

“One hat!” corrected Edina, putting down her foot. “I can’t wear more’n one at a time, and that’s all I want.”

Billie conceded this point, having won so much.

“You might send up a few small shapes in beige or brown to match the coat,” she said to the saleswoman. “Then I guess,” with a hurried glance at her wrist watch, “that will be all!”

From the hats that found their way promptly from the millinery department to the tiny cubicle wherein Billie sat in judgment they selected one small, helmet-like chapeau that fitted Edina’s head snugly and showed only one tantalizing lock of raven-black hair.

“Looks like I was scalped,” was Edina’s comment. “But if you say it’s all right, that goes with me. Now,” with a nervous glance about her at the extravagant numbers of her purchases, “what would you say I’d best wear back to Three Towers Hall?”

“The beige frock, the one you tried on first,” said Billie, without the slightest hesitation. “Then that adorable brown coat with the fox collar and cuffs and the beige hat. Downstairs we’ll get you shoes and hose and gloves to complete the outfit. Good gracious!” Billie glanced at her wrist watch again and jumped to her feet with a look of alarm. “It’s past the time I promised to meet Miss Arbuckle and the girls. You stay here, Edina, and climb into that outfit. I’ll be back in less than two shakes!”

CHAPTER XII

A PERFECT DAY

Billie Bradley found Miss Arbuckle and the girls impatiently awaiting her at the Busy Bee.

“We’re starving!” they cried reproachfully. “What has been keeping you?”

“And where’s the lion cub?” another wanted to know.

Billie smiled mysteriously.

“Just wait till you see her! You’d be surprised!”

Whereupon, Billie proceeded to “fix things” with Miss Arbuckle. This was not difficult, Miss Arbuckle being a friend of Billie’s with consequent implicit belief in the girl’s good sense and judgment.

“We haven’t finished our shopping – not nearly,” Billie explained, having drawn the teacher aside so that the curious and watchful girls could not hear what was said. “If you don’t mind, Miss Arbuckle, I’d like to take Edina to lunch – just the two of us. After that we will shop some more and maybe take in a movie, if there’s time.”

“We – ell,” the teacher hesitated, “if you will give me your word to be on hand to take the school bus back – ”

“Oh, I will,” promised Billie. “Thanks so much, Miss Arbuckle. It would simply spoil everything to – to spring Edina on them now.”

A look of mutual understanding passed between teacher and pupil. Miss Arbuckle smiled.

“I suppose it would,” she agreed. “Run along to your good work, Billie. I’m entirely in sympathy with it and I wish you luck.”

“Miss Arbuckle, you’re a perfect dear!” cried Billie gratefully.

She squeezed the teacher’s hand, flashed one triumphant look at the group of curious, half-envious girls, and darted out into the street.

In the fitting room at the department store, Billie found a transformed Edina impatiently awaiting her. Billie paused in the doorway and stared at the wholly unfamiliar apparition.

“Turn yourself about, Edina,” she breathed. “Slowly – that’s right. My dear, you are a triumph! I’m proud of you – and me! Come along now and we’ll get something to eat. I’m starving. Besides, I’ve got to show you off!”

Edina Tooker would never be beautiful. Nor could she even be spoken of as a pretty girl. But Billie realized as she looked at this new, tastefully dressed Edina that the girl possessed a native dignity and poise that was more compelling than mere prettiness. Her own prophecy was being fulfilled. The girl had become a personage.

Perhaps Edina read something of this in Billie’s prolonged scrutiny.

“I’m just tryin’ to live up to my clothes,” she said, with a wistful smile. “They’re the first things I ever owned in all my life that seemed to – to belong to me. I know I look different and, somehow, I begin to feel different.”

“You will feel differenter and differenter as time goes on,” Billie prophesied gaily. “You’re a knockout, Edina. I can’t wait for the girls to see you.”

Into the eyes of Edina came a provocative gleam that was as new as her new clothes.

“Neither can I!” she confessed. “Mebbe they won’t laugh at me now.”

“They will be simply green with envy,” prophesied Billie. “I am, myself. Just think of having all those perfectly gorgeous new frocks all at once!”

Edina chuckled.