Billie sighed. At that moment she realized, more clearly than ever before, how difficult a problem she had undertaken. The self-appointed guardian of an Edina Tooker could expect no easy time of it!
As the bus started off, Billie looked among the crowd that had gathered on the school steps to see them off. Laura and Vi were not there. They had not even come out to see her off!
However, she caught sight of Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks, standing close together, giggling, and pointing toward Edina Tooker.
Billie turned away. Her color was heightened, her lips set.
“I won’t let anyone spoil this day’s fun for me! I won’t!” she cried, and was angry past all bearing because there were tears of exasperation in her eyes.
However, the morning was fine; Billie was young and about to perform a fascinating experiment. The school bus had barely lumbered through the gates of Three Towers and started out along the lake road before Billie had forgotten her vexation in eager anticipation of what the next few hours might bring forth.
The girls were all in high spirits, bandying jokes back and forth and laughing at their own witticisms until it seemed a wonder the bus did not rock with their mirth.
Billie took her fair share of the merrymaking, answering quips in her inimitable way until Miss Arbuckle herself began to smile and the driver of the bus looked back over his shoulder from time to time with a wide-mouthed grin.
During all the fun, Edina sat grim and unsmiling. The merry sallies were never addressed to her. Had they been she would not have been able to retort in kind. She was as aloof as a snow-capped mountain. Perhaps only Billie Bradley guessed that under her aloof exterior Edina was as much a girl as any of them and that she suffered intensely because of her inability to join in their fun.
The bus passed through Molata at a merry pace and rattled on toward Fleetsburg.