Sometimes, very often in fact, there were boys, too, brothers and friends of the girls, boys who attended Boxton Military Academy. It was great sport, even more thrilling than rowing or canoeing had been, so that when Lake Molata froze over the girls were joyful at the prospect of more fun. There would be skating, and Billie Bradley and her two especial friends were splendid skaters.
Before long the lake was full of joyful, shouting boys and girls whenever the weather was fine. And as for Chet and Teddy and Ferd, they walked the mile from Boxton Academy almost every afternoon.
"Let's have a race," Billie suggested one day, skating up to a group of her chums. Her cheeks were rosy with wind and exercise, and her brown hair had escaped in little curling strands about her ears.
Teddy, looking up at her, thought that she looked like the picture of a girl on a magazine cover that he had seen not so very long before.
"All right," he said, doing a fancy step on the ice that almost landed him on his nose. "Shall we take partners? Yes we shall. Billie, will you be mine?"
The rest of the girls giggled—all but Rose, who had taken a great liking to handsome Teddy and did not at all fancy the way he always singled out Billie, "the little cat"—and Billie made a face at Teddy.
"I'll think about it," she teased, then drew the boys and girls around her while she outlined the course of the race. "Now," she said, "we'll skate straight ahead till we come to where the lake takes that sudden bend. Then we'll double, and whoever passes the big maple tree first will win. Who's going in this race?"
It seemed that nearly everybody wanted to—everybody who could get a partner, that is—and in a minute or two a score of merry young figures were flying over the ice in a gallant effort to make the turn and get back to the old maple first.
It was a pretty scene, at least Caroline Brant thought so. But Rose Belser, sitting close beside her, scraping her skates along the ice until she made two ugly little ridges in it, did not agree with her.
There was Billie, taking the center of the stage again as usual, and there was Caroline looking after her with a smile. Well, Caroline could smile. She had never been the most popular girl at Three Towers, although most of the girls did like her, at that. Billie wasn't taking her place. And she dug still more viciously at the ice.