For a moment there was intense silence while Amanda rose triumphantly and flounced up to the platform.
Then an amazed, angry buzz rose from the audience of indignant girls. Amanda, who was proverbially stupid, to have taken the prize from some of the brightest girls in the school! It was impossible—incredible! And yet it was only too true!
Miss Walters, with a few words of congratulation, handed the prize—a fine set of books—to Amanda, and the latter swept haughtily back to her seat, triumph in every line of her figure as she passed the other pupils.
She had beaten Billie Bradley at last! And her revenge was sweeter than even she had dreamed it would be.
But Billie, tears of anger and disappointment stinging her eyes, felt sure that she had not been beaten fairly. Amanda had played a trick on her, on the rest of the contestants for the prize, on Miss Walters herself. But, in Teddy’s vocabulary, Amanda had “gotten away with it.” The prize was in her possession.
“It’s a shame,” she heard in angry protest all about her.
“She never did it honestly.”
“Somebody ought to tell Miss Walters. She doesn’t know Amanda as well as we do.”
But Miss Walters had raised her hand for silence, and in a few seconds the angry murmurs died down again.
“I have the pleasure of awarding the second prize,” the principal announced, “to Beatrice Bradley. Will you step up on the platform, Billie?”