“I mean we will go ahead with our plans just as we planned them!” said Billie. She jumped to her feet with swift decision. “I have already spoken to Miss Walters about a shopping tour to Fleetsburg.” Fleetsburg was the next town to Molata, a fairly cosmopolitan place with several large stores and a theater. “Some of the girls want to go to a matinée and Miss Arbuckle is to chaperone them. We are to go in the school bus and may have the whole day to spend as we like. We will buy clothes and other pretties till we’re weary. You and I, Edina Tooker, are going to have a very large time!”
Edina caught her breath. The wistful longing in her round, red face was pitiful to Billie. She caught Billie’s hand and squeezed it hard.
“You’re awful good to me. Seems like I never thought anybody could be so good.”
“No thanks, please!” cried Billie gaily. “Anyway, my work will bring its own reward. When we return to Three Towers Hall to-morrow you are going to be everybody’s ideal of what a perfect, modern schoolgirl should be!”
Edina’s gratitude, her eager anticipation, warmed Billie’s heart. She carried her mood of elation to bed with her and woke with it in the morning.
“To-day is going to be one of the most interesting I have ever lived through,” she thought. “The look on the girls’ faces when they see my new edition of Edina will be worth all the trouble. Only,” her face clouded, “I wish Laura and Vi could share the fun with me.”
CHAPTER X
A TRIP TO TOWN
For the first time during all the years of their mutual association and friendship, there was a rift between Billie Bradley and her chums. Edina Tooker was the cause of it, as Edina herself very well knew.
Laura and Vi did not like Edina. They saw her as raw, uncouth, ill-tempered. Edina, who was always one to return either friendship or enmity with interest, did not go out of her way to alter their opinion of her. She disliked Laura and Vi openly, and this they took as a personal affront.