Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island Part 9

"No, it isn't--it's Teddy," contradicted Laura.

"It's both of 'em," added Vi.

"No, you are both wrong," said Connie, gazing eagerly through the trees.

"Here they come, girls. Look, there are four of them."

"Yes, there are four of them," mocked Laura, mischievous eyes on Connie's reddening face. "The third is Ferd Stowing, of course. And I wonder, oh, I wonder, who the fourth can be!"

"Don't be so silly! I think you're horrid!" cried Connie, which only made Laura chuckle the more.

For while they had been at the Academy, the boys had made a friend. His name was Paul Martinson, and he was tall and strongly built and--yes, even Billie had to admit it--almost as good looking as Teddy!

If Billie said that about any one it was pretty sure to be true. For Billie and Teddy Jordon had been chums and playmates since they could remember, and Billie had always been sure that Teddy must be the very best looking boy in the world, not even excepting her brother Chet, of whom she was very fond.

But Billie was not the only one who had found Paul Martinson good looking. Connie had liked him, and had said innocently one day after the boys had gone that Paul Martinson looked like the hero in a story book she was reading.

The girls had giggled, and since then Laura had made poor Connie's life miserable--or so Connie declared. She could not have forgotten Paul Martinson, even if she had wanted to.

As for Paul Martinson, he had shown a liking for Billie that somehow made Teddy uncomfortable. Teddy was very much surprised to find how uncomfortable it did make him. Billie was a "good little chum and all that, but that didn't say that another fellow couldn't speak to her." But just the same he had acted so queerly two or three times lately that Billie had bothered him exceedingly asking him what the matter with him was and telling him to "cheer up, it wasn't somebody's funeral, you know." Billie had been puzzled over his answer to that. He had muttered something about "it's not anybody's funeral yet, maybe, but everything had to start sometime."

When Billie had innocently told Laura about it she was still more puzzled at the way Laura had acted. Instead of being sensible, she had suddenly buried her face in the pillow--they had been sitting on Billie's bed, exchanging confidences--and fairly shook with laughter.

"Well, what in the world----" Billie had begun rather resentfully, when Laura had interrupted her with an hysterical: "For goodness sake, Billie, I never thought you could be so dense. But you are. You're absolutely crazy, and so is Teddy, and so is everybody!"

And after that Billie never confided any of Teddy's sayings to Laura again.

On this particular afternoon it did not take the girls long to find out that the boys had some good news to tell them.

"Come on down to the dock," Teddy said, taking hold of Billie's arm and urging her down toward the lake as he spoke. "Maybe we can find some canoes and rowboats that aren't working."

But when they reached the dock there was never a craft of any kind to be seen except those far out upon the glistening water of the lake. Of course the beautiful weather was responsible for this, for all the girls who had not lessons to do or errands in town had made a bee line--as Ferd Stowing expressed it--straight down to the lake.

"Oh, well, this will do," said Teddy, sitting down on the edge of the little dock so that his feet could hang over and reaching up a hand for Billie. "Come along, everybody. We can look at the water, anyway."

The girls and boys scrambled down obediently and there was great excitement when Connie's foot slipped and she very nearly tumbled into the lake. Paul Martinson steadied her, and she thanked him with a little blush that made Laura look at her wickedly.

"How beautifully pink your complexion is in the warm weather, Connie,"

she said innocently, adding with a little look that made Connie want to shake her: "It can't be anything _but_ the heat, can it? You haven't a fever, or something?"

"No. But you'll have something beside a fever," threatened Connie, "if you don't keep still."

"Say, stop your rowing, girls, and listen to me," Teddy interrupted, picking a pebble from the dock and throwing it far out into the gleaming water, where it dropped with a little splash. "Our famous parade of cadets comes off next week. You're going to be on deck, aren't you?"

"We might," said Billie, with a demure little glance at him, "if somebody would only ask us!"

CHAPTER IX

AMANDA AGAIN

The great day came at last and found the girls in a fever of mingled excitement and fear. Excitement because of the great advent; fear, because the sky had been overcast since early morning and it looked as if the whole thing might have to be postponed on account of rain.

"And if there is anything I hate," complained Laura, moving restlessly from her mirror over to the window and back again, "it's to be all prepared for a thing and then have it spoiled at the last minute by rain."

"Well, I guess you don't hate it any more than the rest of us," said Billie, her thoughts on the pretty pink flowered dress she had decided to wear to the parade. It was not only a pretty dress, but was very becoming. Both Teddy and Chet had told her so. "And the boys would be terribly disappointed," she added.

"I wonder," Vi was sitting on the bed, sewing a hook and eye on the dress she had intended to wear, "if Amanda Peabody and The Shadow will be there."

Laura turned abruptly from the window and regarded her with a reproachful stare.

"Now I know you're a joy killer," she said; "for if Amanda Peabody and The Shadow (the name the girls had given Eliza Dilks because she always followed Amanda as closely as a shadow does) succeeded in getting themselves invited to any sort of affair where we girls were to be, they would be sure to do something annoying."

"They are going to be there, just the same," said Billie, and the two girls looked at her in surprise. "They told me so," she said, in answer to the unspoken question. "They have some sort of relatives among the boys at the Academy, and these relatives didn't have sense enough not to invite them."

"Humph!" grunted Laura, "Amanda probably hinted around till the boys couldn't help inviting her. Look--oh, look!" she cried in such a different tone that the girls stared at her. "The sun!" she said. "Oh, it's going to clear up, it's going to clear up!"

"Well, you needn't step on my blue silk for all that," complained Vi, as Laura caught an exultant heel in the latter's dress.

"Don't be grouchy, darling," said Laura, all good-nature again now that the sun had appeared. "My, but we're going to have a good time!"

"I'll say we are," sang out Billie, as she gayly spread out the pink flowered dress upon the bed. "And we're not going to let anybody spoil it either--even Eliza Dilks and Amanda Peabody."

The girls had an hour in which to get ready, and they were ready and waiting before half that time was up. The Three Towers Hall carryall was to call for the girls who had been lucky enough to receive invitations from the cadets of Boxton Military Academy, and as the girls, looking like gay-colored b.u.t.terflies in their summery dresses, gathered on the steps of the school there were so many of them that it began to look as if the carryall would have to make two trips.

"If we have to go in sections I wonder whether we'll be in the first or second," Vi was saying when Billie grasped her arm.

"Look," she cried, merriment in her eyes and in her voice. "Here come Amanda and Eliza. Did you ever see anything so funny--and awful--in your life?"

For Amanda and her chum were dressed in their Sunday best--poplin dresses with a huge, gorgeous flower design that made the pretty, delicate-colored dresses of the other girls look pale and washed-out by comparison. If Amanda's and Eliza's desire was to be the most noticeable and talked-of girls on the parade, they were certainly going to succeed. The talk had begun already!

However, the arrival of the carryall cut short the girls' amus.e.m.e.nt, and there was great excitement and noise and giggling as the girls--all who could get in, that is--clambered in.

There were about a dozen left over, and these the driver promised to come back and pick up "in a jiffy."

"I'm feeling awfully nervous," Laura confided to Billie. "I never expected to be nervous; did you?"

"Yes, I did," Billie answered truthfully. "I've been nervous ever since the boys invited us. It's because it's all so new, I guess. We've never been to anything like this before."

"I'm frightened to death when I think of meeting Captain Sh.e.l.ling,"

Connie leaned across Vi to say. "From what the boys say about him he must be simply wonderful."

"Paul had better look out," said Laura slyly, and Connie drew back sharply.

"I think you're mean to tease Connie so," spoke up Vi. "She doesn't like Paul Martinson any better than the rest of us do, and you know it."