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

CHAPTER XVI – CHRISTMAS CHEER

So Miss Walters was seeing to it that Polly Haddon received food regularly – “almost every night!” Of course Miss Walters had promised to look out for the family, but the girls had hardly expected her to be so generous.

And while they were still turning the revelation over wonderingly in their minds, Polly Haddon called to them softly from the other room.

It was a bare little room into which they stepped – barer and poorer than even they had imagined. And in the midst of a little iron bed lay Peter, so pathetically white and emaciated that it tore their hearts to look at him.

“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?”

“I don’t know,” answered Billie honestly. “Perhaps it is just because I would like to help you so much.”

The woman reached over and patted her hand gently, but her eyes had become listless again.

“You – everybody – have been so good to me,” she said, tonelessly. “I don’t know why you have been so good – no one ever was before. But there is one thing you can not do for me. You can not restore my poor husband’s invention, the loss of which caused his death. That would be a miracle. And in these days no one is working miracles.”

Mrs. Haddon left the room for a moment, and in that moment Billie slipped the little box containing their three precious gold pieces behind the alarm clock that stood on a shelf over the sink.

The woman returned before Billie had quite finished, but she was too worried and anxious and unhappy to notice anything unusual. And the little box was still safe in its hiding place when the girls took their leave a few minutes later.

“Won’t she be surprised when she finds it?” crowed Vi delightedly. “I feel like Santa Claus.”

“Well, you don’t look like it,” returned Laura, “Your face isn’t red enough.”

CHAPTER XVII – BILLIE ON GUARD

From this remark of Laura’s it may be easily seen that she was still a little grouchy about having to give up five dollars’ worth of sodas and candy. But away down in her heart she derived more real pleasure from the thought of what her gold piece would buy for the Haddons than she would out of a great deal more than five dollars’ worth of pleasure for herself.

“Billie,” spoke up Vi suddenly after they had walked some little way in silence, “what did you ask Mrs. Haddon about that lost invention for?”

“Yes, it sounded as if you really knew something about it,” Laura took her up eagerly. “You don’t, do you?”

“Not a thing in the world,” Billie replied quickly. “Only,” she added slowly, the same thoughtful look in her eyes that had been there before, “so many queer things have happened to me lately that I’m getting sort of queer myself, I guess. I can’t help thinking about that cave Teddy and I found.”

“Well, I don’t blame you for thinking of it,” said Laura, looking curiously at her chum. “I think of it myself – quite often. But what has that to do with the stolen machinery models?”

“Nothing, of course,” said Billie, adding as the three towers of the grand old Hall loomed into view. “But I would like to have a look at the inside of that cave again. Maybe the models were taken there and broken up. The cave was full of junk.”

Laura, really curious by this time, was about to put a question when she saw Amanda and the “Shadow” approaching, and the question died in her throat.

The three classmates, who never deliberately “cut” anybody, nodded to the two girls in a friendly enough manner, but the latter looked straight at them and never so much as winked an eye.

“Whew!” whistled Laura, softly, as the chums stopped and looked back after the unmannerly girls. “Cut, by jinks!”

“And by Amanda, of all people!” added Vi, in the same tone.

“Well, come on,” said Billie, and she turned and led the way up the steps. “There’s no use standing there and looking after them like a lot of wooden Indians. I’d like – ” she added, her temper getting the better of her for the moment, “I would like to wring that girl’s neck.”

“Do you know,” said Vi a few minutes later when they were washing themselves in the dormitory, “that Amanda has entered for the composition prize?”

The girls looked at her unbelievingly.

“Amanda!” cried Billie, laughing at the absurdity of the thing. “Why, Amanda can hardly write her own name. You know that.”

“Of course I know it,” agreed Vi, scrubbing her face vigorously. “That’s why it seems so silly. Unless she has something up her sleeve,” she added meaningly.

“How did you find out?” asked Laura, curling up on the bed and regarding her chum severely. “Did she tell you?”

“Tell me!” repeated Vi with a chuckle. “That isa good one. No, I just happened to overhear her telling Eliza that she had entered for the composition prize and that she was going to give Billie Bradley the surprise of her life.”

“She surely does love me,” sighed Billie, as she pulled her pretty curls into place. “I don’t see why she doesn’t pick on somebody else for a change.”

“Well, you’d better look out, that’s all,” said Vi, wrinkling her forehead seriously. “I’m almost sure she is planning some crooked work, and it’s up to us to double cross her.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Laura delightedly. “And Vi is the one who is always calling me down for using slang. Fine for a beginner, Vi darling. Keep it up.”

The result of this revelation of Vi’s was to make the girls watch Amanda and the “Shadow” more carefully than ever before. And if it had not been for just this watchfulness there is no telling what might have happened to Billie Bradley, and through her, to her classmates.

And this was the way it happened.

Luckily for the three North Bend chums, Amanda and her “Shadow” shared the dormitory with them and Rose Belser. And so it was that Billie, coming in unexpectedly one day heard the very end of a sentence spoken in a loud whisper by Amanda. And though it was only the end of the sentence, it told a great deal to Billie, whose suspicions had already been aroused.

“ – at ten to-night, in Miss Race’s room,” were the words she caught. The fact that Amanda stopped speaking at sight of her and grew an unsightly brick red, gave Billie further proof that the girl was plotting mischief. Very probably the scapegoat was to be – herself.

She gave no sign that she had heard anything out of the ordinary, but when she had found the book she had come for and was out in the hall once more, her heart was pounding heavily and her face was hot.

Ever since they had come to Three Towers Amanda had done her best to discredit Billie. She had not succeeded so far, but some time she might. Was this the time? thought Billie, a dull rage taking possession of her.

No! She would not let Amanda get the better of her. She would outwit her, now that she had been warned. Then a dreadful thought came to her.

Suppose Amanda, thinking she had given her secret away, postponed her miserable plot, whatever it was, until another time? No wonder Billie answered questions queerly that afternoon, so queerly, in fact, that one teacher asked her if she were ill and would like to be excused!

But Billie did not want to be excused – that would mean more time to herself to think. And so she blundered through the miserable afternoon and her heart jumped with relief when the last gong sounded that meant liberty.

Connie and Laura overtook her in the hall on the way to the dormitory and Laura looked actually anxious.

“What was the matter with you this afternoon?” she asked. “Why, you answered ‘no’ three times when it should have been ‘yes,’ and it sounded so silly I’d have had to laugh if I hadn’t been scared to death!”

“What is it, Billie?” added Connie, putting an arm about her friend. “You look dreadfully white. Aren’t you feeling well?”

Then, pulling them into a secluded corner of the dormitory, Billie told them what she had heard, and as Vi came in just as she had finished, she had to tell it all over again, just for her benefit.

Of course the girls were all angry, and Laura wanted to go and have it out with Amanda at once, but Billie, who had had all the afternoon to think out the best thing to do, commanded her to say nothing about it to any one.

“Listen,” she said, tensely. “Somebody’s apt to come in at any minute, and then I can’t say it. This is what we will do to-night.

“We’ll pull our nighties on over our clothes, get into bed and pretend to go to sleep. Then we’ll wait till Amanda starts whatever she’s going to do, and we’ll follow her and see what she’s up to.”

“And then,” said Laura, driven to more forceful slang by the necessity for emphasis, “we’ll just aboutsettle her!”

True to their plans, they retired to the dormitory that night before Amanda or the “Shadow” or Rose Belser arrived there, and they hurriedly slipped their nightgowns over their clothes and got into bed.

“Poor Connie’s wailing her heart out,” chuckled Laura, “because she’s in another dorm and can’t be in at the death. I say, Vi, push the collar of your dress down. It shows outside your nightie.”

“Sh-h,” warned Billie. “I hear somebody coming – ”

The somebody proved to be no other than Amanda and Eliza, and when they entered they found Billie and Laura and Vi sleeping peacefully with a cherubic expression of utter innocence on their faces.

It seemed to the girls that they had never lived through an hour so long as that between nine o’clock and ten that night. And it was with more than relief that they heard a slight stir at last and saw a shadowy figure slip out of bed and make noiselessly for the door. And while they held their breath for fear their breathing might betray them, they saw a second shadow flit after the first one. “The Shadow,” in fact!

They waited till the conspirators had had time to get well down the hall, then they too slipped quietly out of bed, pulled their nightgowns off, and started in pursuit.

“Sh,” whispered Billie. “Take your time. We want to let them do it before we catch them at it.”

When they reached Miss Race’s door they were surprised to see a light in the room. Was it possible Amanda had been brazen enough to turn on the light herself?

Cautiously Billie peeped into the room and saw that Amanda and Eliza were busily at work doing something to the teacher’s desk at the other end of the room. They were alone, so it must have been Amanda who had switched on the light. The girl was bold with the courage of stupidity.

Laura uttered a stifled exclamation, and would have pushed past Billie but the latter held her back. For still another minute she hesitated, then called to the girls softly.

“Now,” she said, and ran swiftly into the room, Laura and Vi beside her. So quickly and silently did they come that they were almost upon the two girls before either of them looked up. Then —

“Amanda Peabody!” cried Billie, her voice choked with anger. “We’ve caught you this time! Now let’s see what you were doing!”