Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island Part 6

"Can't reform 'em!" Billie repeated in dismay. "Goodness, do you suppose that's what she really thinks of me?"

"I don't see why she shouldn't," Laura said wickedly, and Billie would surely have thrown something at her if Miss Arbuckle's eye had not happened at that moment to turn in her direction.

Miss Arbuckle's eye brought to Billie's mind the teacher's trouble, and she confided it in a low tone to Laura.

"Humph," commented Laura, her mind only on the fun they were going to have that afternoon, "I'm sorry, of course, but I don't believe any old alb.u.m would make me shed tears."

"Don't be so sure of that, Laura."

"What? Cry over an old alb.u.m?" and Laura looked her astonishment.

"But suppose the alb.u.m had in it the pictures of those you loved very dearly--pictures perhaps of those that were dead and gone and pictures that you couldn't replace?"

"Oh, well--I suppose that would be different. Did she say anything about the people?"

"She didn't go into details, but she said they were pictures she prized above anything."

"Oh, perhaps then that would make a difference."

"I hope she gets the alb.u.m back," said Billie seriously.

Then Laura promptly forgot all about both Miss Arbuckle and the alb.u.m.

A little while later the girls swung joyfully out upon the road, bound for town and shopping and perhaps some ice cream and--oh, just a jolly good time of the kind girls know so well how to have, especially in the spring of the year.

CHAPTER VI

FOUND--ONE ALb.u.m

"I'm sorry Connie couldn't come along," said Laura, drinking in deep breaths of the fragrant air.

"Yes," said Billie, her eyes twinkling. "She said she wished she hadn't been born with a conscience."

"A conscience," said Vi innocently. "Why?"

"Because," said Billie, her cheeks aglow with the heat and exercise, her brown hair clinging in little damp ringlets to her forehead, and her eyes bright with health and the love of life, "then she could have had a good time to-day instead of staying at home in a stuffy room and writing a cartload of letters. She says if she doesn't write them, she'll never dare face her friends when she gets home."

"She's a darling," said Laura, executing a little skip in the road that sent the dust flying all about them. "Just think--if we hadn't met her we wouldn't be looking forward to Lighthouse Island and a dear old uncle who owns the light----"

"Anybody would think he was your uncle," said Vi.

"Well, he might just as well be," Laura retorted. "Connie says that he adopts all the boys and girls about the place."

"And that they adopt him," Billie added, with a nod. "He must be a darling. I'm just crazy to see him."

Connie Danver's Uncle Tom attended the lighthouse, and, living there all the year around, had become as much of a fixture as the island itself.

Connie loved this uncle of hers, and had told the girls enough about him to rouse their curiosity and make them very eager to meet him.

The girls walked on in silence for a little way and then, as they came to a path that led into the woods, Laura stopped suddenly and said in a dramatic voice:

"Do you realize where we are, my friends? Do you, by any chance, remember a tall, thin, wild-eyed man?"

Did they remember? In a flash they were back again in a queer little hut in the woods, where a tall man stood and stared at them with strange eyes.

Laura and Vi started to go on, but Billie stood staring at the path with fascinated eyes.

"I wonder why," she said, as she turned slowly away in response to the urging of the girls, "nothing ever seems the same in the sunlight. The other night when we were running along that path we were scared to death, and now----"

"You sound as if you'd like to stay scared to death," said Laura impatiently, for Laura had not Billie's imagination.

"I guess I don't like to be scared any more than any one else," Billie retorted. "But I _would_ like to see that man again. I wonder----" she paused and Vi prompted her.

"Wonder what?" she asked.

"Why," said Billie, a thoughtful little crease on her forehead, "I was just wondering if we could find the little hut again if we tried."

"Of course we couldn't!" Laura was very decided about it. "We were lost, weren't we? And when the man showed us the way back it was dark----"

"The only way I can see," said Vi, who often had rather funny ideas, "would be to have one of us stand in the road and hold on to strings tied to the other two so that if they got lost----"

"The one in the road could haul 'em back," said Laura sarcastically.

"That's a wonderful idea, Vi."

"Well, I _would_ like to see that man again," sighed Billie. "He seemed so sad. I'm sure he was in trouble, and I'd so like to help him."

"Yes and when you offered you nearly got your head bit off," observed Laura.

Billie's eyes twinkled.

"That's what Daddy says always happens to people who try to help," she said. "I feel awfully sorry for him, just the same," she finished decidedly.

Then Laura did a surprising thing. She put an arm about Billie's shoulders and hugged her fondly.

"Billie Bradley," she said sadly, "I do believe you would feel sorry for a snake that bit you, just because it was only a snake."

"Perhaps that's why she loves _you_," said Vi innocently, and scored a point. Laura looked as if she wanted to be mad for a minute, but she was not. She only laughed with the girls.

They had as good a time as they had expected to have in town that afternoon--and that is saying something.

First they went shopping. Laura had need of a ribbon girdle. Although they all knew that a blue one would be bought in the end, as blue was the color that would go best with the dress with which the girdle was to be worn, the merits and beauties of a green one and a lavender one were discussed and comparisons made with the blue one over and over, all from very love of the indecision and, more truly, the joy that looking at the dainty, pretty colors gave them.

"Well, I think this is the very best of all, Laura," said Billie finally, picking up the pretty blue girdle with its indistinct pattern of lighter blue and white.

"Yes, it is a beauty," replied Laura. "I'll take that one," she went on to the clerk.