“We’ve got to run,” gasped Billie. “If we miss that bus, it’s all up with us. I promised Miss Arbuckle——” The sentence went unfinished, for at the next street corner they came in sight of the bus. Miss Arbuckle and the girls stood beside it, talking animatedly. Billie guessed from their gestures that she and Edina were the topic of conversation.
Billie had been almost running. Now she slowed her pace and glanced imperatively at Edina.
“Pull your hat down and put the collar of your coat up a little,” she ordered. “That’s right! You look swell! Act as if you knew it.”
That was all very well for Billie Bradley, thought poor Edina; but Billie could scarcely be expected to know how it felt to be dressed up like a tailor’s dummy and set in a window to be stared at!
Unconsciously Edina’s face assumed the old, grim expression of defiance. She was the “lion cub” dressed up.
With her accustomed tact and kind-heartedness, Miss Arbuckle assumed charge of the situation. With the gesture of a motherly hen scattering her chicks, she shooed the staring, curious girls into the bus, so that when Billie and her companion reached it, there was no one on the sidewalk.
Billie was in fine spirits again.
“Follow me,” she called to Edina. “And be sure to pick up the packages I drop! It will be a mercy if we get back to Three Towers with half the things we’ve bought.”
As Billie and Edina entered the bus, all eyes were turned upon Billie’s companion.
The moment of amazed silence that greeted the apparition of this new Edina Tooker was a genuine tribute to Billie’s accomplishment.