Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island Part 7

After that came numerous smaller purchases until, as Vi said dolefully, all their money was gone except enough to buy several plates of ice cream apiece.

They were standing just outside the store where their last purchases had been made when Billie, looking down the street, gave a cry of delight.

"Look who's coming!" she exclaimed.

"It's the boys!" cried Vi. "Mercy, girls, we might just as well have spent the rest of our money, the boys will treat us to the ice cream."

"Goodness, Vi! do you want to spend your money whether you get anything you really need or wish for or not?" inquired Billie, with a little gasp.

"What in the world is money for if not to spend?" asked Vi, making big and innocent eyes at Billie.

Just then the boys came within speaking distance.

"Well, this is what I call luck!" exclaimed Ferd Stowing.

"Yes," added Teddy, putting his hand in his pocket, "just hear the money jingle. A nice big check from Dad in just appreciation of his absent son!

What do you girls say to an ice-cream spree? No less than three apiece, with all this unwonted wealth."

"Ice cream? I should say!" was Billie's somewhat slangy acceptance.

"Teddy," suddenly asked Laura, "how does it come that you have any money left from Dad's check?"

"Check came just as we left the Academy, Captain Sh.e.l.ling cashed it for me, and we have just reached town."

"Oh! Well, maybe I'll find one, too, when we reach Three Towers."

"So that's it, is it, sister mine? Envy!"

After that they ate ice cream to repletion, and at last the girls decided that there was nothing much left to do but to go back to the school.

It was just as well that they had made this decision, for the sun was beginning to sink in the west and the supper hour at Three Towers Hall was rather early. As they started toward home, having said good-bye to the boys, the girls quickened their pace.

It was not till they were nearing the path which, to Billie at least, had been surrounded by a mysterious halo since the adventure of the other night that the girls slowed up. Then it was Billie who did the slowing up.

"Girls," she said in a hushed voice, "I suppose you'll laugh at me, but I'd just love to follow that path into the woods a little way. You don't need to come if you don't want to. You can wait for me here in the road."

"Oh, no," said Laura, with a little sigh of resignation. "If you are going to be crazy we might as well be crazy with you. Come on, Vi, if we didn't go along, she would probably get lost all over again--just for the fun of it."

Billie made a little face at them and plunged into the woods. Laura followed, and after a minute's hesitation Vi trailed at Laura's heels.

They were so used to Billie's sudden impulses that they had stopped protesting and merely went along with her, which, as Billie herself had often pointed out, saved a great deal of argument.

They might have saved themselves all worry on Billie's account this time, though, for she had not the slightest intention of getting lost again--once was enough.

She went only as far as the end of the path, and when the other girls reached her she was peering off into the forest as if she hoped to see the mysterious hut--although she knew as well as Laura and Vi that they had walked some distance through the woods the other night before they had finally reached the path.

"Well, are you satisfied?" Laura asked, with a patient sigh. "If you don't mind my saying it, I'm getting hungry."

"Goodness! after all that ice cream?" cried Billie, adding with a little chuckle: "You're luckier than I am, Laura. I feel as if I shouldn't want anything to eat for a thousand years."

She was just turning reluctantly to follow her chums back along the path when a dark, bulky-looking object lying in a clump of bushes near by caught her eye and she went over to examine it.

"Now what in the world----" Laura was beginning despairingly when suddenly Billie gave a queer little cry.

"Come here quick, girls!" she cried, reaching down to pick up the bulky object which had caught her attention. "I do believe--yes, it is--it must be----"

"Well, say it!" the others cried, peering impatiently over her shoulder.

"Miss Arbuckle's alb.u.m," finished Billie.

CHAPTER VII

STRANGE ACTIONS

Instead of seeming excited, Laura and Vi stared. Vi had not even heard that Miss Arbuckle had lost an alb.u.m, and Laura just dimly remembered Billie's having said something about it.

But Billie's eyes were shining, and she was all eagerness as she picked the old-fashioned volume up and began turning over the pages. She was thinking of poor Miss Arbuckle's red nose and eyes of that morning and of how different the teacher's face would look when she, Billie, returned the alb.u.m.

"Oh, I'm so glad," she said. "I felt awfully sorry for Miss Arbuckle this morning."

"Well, I wish I knew what you were talking about," said Vi plaintively, and Billie briefly told of her meeting with Miss Arbuckle in the morning and of the teacher's grief at losing her precious alb.u.m.

"Humph! I don't see anything very precious about it," sniffed Laura.

"Look--the corners are all worn through."

"Silly, it doesn't make any difference how old it is," said Vi as they started back along the path, Billie holding on tight to the book. "It may have pictures in it she wants to save. It may be--what is it they call 'em?--an heirloom or something. And Mother says heirlooms are precious."

"Well, I know one that isn't," said Laura, with a little grimace. "Mother has a wreath made out of hair of different members of the family. She says it's precious, too; but I notice she keeps it in the darkest corner of the attic."

"Well, this isn't a hair wreath, it's an alb.u.m," Billie pointed out. "And I don't blame Miss Arbuckle for not wanting to lose an alb.u.m with family pictures in it."

"But how did she come to lose it there?" asked Laura, as the road could be seen dimly through the trees. "The woods seem a funny place. Girls,"

and Laura's eyes began to shine excitedly, "it's a mystery!"

"Oh, dear," sighed Vi plaintively, "there she goes again. Everything has to be a mystery, whether it is or not."

"But it is, isn't it?" insisted Laura, turning to Billie for support. "A lady says she has lost an alb.u.m. In a little while we find that same alb.u.m----"

"I suppose it's the same," put in Billie, looking at the alb.u.m as if it had not occurred to her before that this might not be Miss Arbuckle's alb.u.m, after all.

"Of course it is, silly," Laura went on impatiently. "It isn't likely that two people would be foolish enough to lose alb.u.ms on the same day.

If it had been a stick pin now, or a purse----"

"Yes, yes, go on," Billie interrupted. "You were talking about mysteries."