Amid a clamor of voices the meeting broke up and the girls filed out, apparently well-satisfied with their part in the proceedings.
Billie, Connie, Laura, and Vi were left behind with Edina Tooker in the big emptied gymnasium. Billie thrust the sixty-five dollars in bills and change toward Edina.
“Here, treasurer, you will have to take care of this in the future.”
Edina regarded the money doubtfully. Under considerable urging she scooped it up and deposited it in her new pocketbook.
“I never did like the job of lookin’ out for other folks’ cash,” she protested. “Suppose I should lose it?”
“That’s your job from now on,” said Connie Danvers, with a shrewd but not unkindly glance. “I’d suggest you sleep with it under your pillow.”
This advice was followed undeviatingly by Edina during the uneasy days that followed. Nightly, the new-made treasurer was haunted by dreams wherein bold robbers with masks and enormous forty-fives dashed out of dark alleys or around street corners, demanding her money or her life.
The fund grew astonishingly, and, with it, Edina’s responsibility. On the fourth day after the election of officers it had reached the—to Edina—terrifying sum of two hundred and sixty dollars.
It was then that the new treasurer made up her mind to go in search of Billie.
She found the latter on the tennis courts, playing against Amanda Peabody. Edina frowned her disapproval. Billie had promised to rest that knee for the big contest, now only a few days off. This was the way she kept her promise, prancing all over the court with that hateful Amanda Peabody!