Laura turned abruptly from the window and regarded her with a reproachful stare.
“Now I know you’re a joy killer,” she said; “for if Amanda Peabody and The Shadow (the name the girls had given Eliza Dilks because she always followed Amanda as closely as a shadow does) succeeded in getting themselves invited to any sort of affair where we girls were to be, they would be sure to do something annoying.”
“They are going to be there, just the same,” said Billie, and the two girls looked at her in surprise. “They told me so,” she said, in answer to the unspoken question. “They have some sort of relatives among the boys at the Academy, and these relatives didn’t have sense enough not to invite them.”
“Humph!” grunted Laura, “Amanda probably hinted around till the boys couldn’t help inviting her. Look—oh, look!” she cried in such a different tone that the girls stared at her. “The sun!” she said. “Oh, it’s going to clear up, it’s going to clear up!”
“Well, you needn’t step on my blue silk for all that,” complained Vi, as Laura caught an exultant heel in the latter’s dress.
“Don’t be grouchy, darling,” said Laura, all good-nature again now that the sun had appeared. “My, but we’re going to have a good time!”
“I’ll say we are,” sang out Billie, as she gayly spread out the pink flowered dress upon the bed. “And we’re not going to let anybody spoil it either—even Eliza Dilks and Amanda Peabody.”
The girls had an hour in which to get ready, and they were ready and waiting before half that time was up. The Three Towers Hall carryall was to call for the girls who had been lucky enough to receive invitations from the cadets of Boxton Military Academy, and as the girls, looking like gay-colored butterflies in their summery dresses, gathered on the steps of the school there were so many of them that it began to look as if the carryall would have to make two trips.
“If we have to go in sections I wonder whether we’ll be in the first or second,” Vi was saying when Billie grasped her arm.
“Look,” she cried, merriment in her eyes and in her voice. “Here come Amanda and Eliza. Did you ever see anything so funny—and awful—in your life?”