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

The woman nodded, drearily, while two big tears rolled slowly down her face.

“Yes, I think they would have accepted it and paid my husband almost anything he would have asked for it,” she answered.

“But haven’t you ever found out who stole it?” asked Vi, eagerly. “I should think that the thief, whoever he is, would have brought the invention back because of the twenty thousand dollars.”

The woman nodded again.

“Yes, that was the queer thing about it,” she said. “When the knitting company first told us of the reward we were jubilant, my husband and I. We thought surely we would recover the precious invention then. But as the weeks went by and we heard nothing, the strain was too much. Poor Frank, after all those years of struggle, with victory snatched away at the last minute, when he had every right to think it in his grasp – my poor husband could fight no longer. He died.”

With these words the poor woman bowed her head upon her hands and sobbed brokenly. The girls, feeling heartily sorry for her trouble but helpless to comfort her, rose awkwardly to their feet and picked up their skates from the floor where they had thrown them.

Billie went over to the sobbing woman and patted her shyly on the shoulder.

“I – I wish I could help you,” she ventured. “I – we are dreadfully sorry for you.”

Then as the woman neither moved nor made an answer, Billie motioned to Laura and Vi and they stepped quietly from the room into the chill of the open, closing the door softly behind them.

CHAPTER IV – GENEROUS PLANS

The girls talked a great deal of Mrs. Haddon and her trouble as they put on their skates and slowly skated back to the Hall.

“It must be dreadful,” Laura was saying thoughtfully just as the three towers of the school loomed up before them, “not to have enough to eat. Just think of it, girls, to be hungry – and not have enough to eat!”

No wonder this condition of affairs seemed unusually horrible, in fact almost impossible to luxury-loving Laura, whose father was one of the richest and most influential men in rich and influential North Bend. To Laura it seemed incredible that every one should not have enough and to spare of the good things that, rightly used, go to make happiness in this strange old world. She had never known what it was to have a wish that was not gratified almost on the instant.

“Yes, it must be awful,” Billie answered soberly, in response to Laura’s exclamation. “And I’m sure,” she added decidedly, “that I won’t be able to enjoy another good meal until I know that those three poor little kiddies and Mrs. Haddon have had all they could possibly eat – for once, at least.”

“What do you mean?” they asked, wonderingly.

“We’ll pack a basket,” planned Billie, growing excited over the great idea which had just that minute occurred to her. “We’ll put everything in it that we can possibly think of, chicken sandwiches and a bottle of current jelly, a thermos bottle of hot coffee and another of milk for the children – ”

“Say wake up, wake up,” begged Laura, irreverently. “Where do you suppose we are going to get all this stuff anyway? It’s too late to go to town – ”

“Who said anything about going to town?” Billie interrupted impatiently. “I’m going straight to Miss Walters and tell her all about the Haddon family and ask her to let us raid the kitchen and make up the basket ourselves. We can pay for the things,” she added, as an afterthought.

“It’s a bright idea – but it takes nerve,” said Laura slangily. “Miss Walters may not like the idea of feeding the countryside.”

“I’m not asking her to feed the countryside,” Billie retorted, adding comfortably as a picture of Miss Walters, white-haired, blue-eyed and sweet, rose before her: “I’m sure she will let us do it just this once.”

For Miss Walters, strict though she was at maintaining discipline in the school, was nevertheless generosity and kindness itself to every one about her.

“But,” said Laura, uttering one last protest, “I don’t believe Mrs. Haddon would accept anything that looked like charity. She’s too proud.”

“We 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.”