Booths of all sorts and colors were distributed over the parade ground, leaving free only the part where the cadets were to march. Girls in bright-colored dresses and boys in trim uniforms were already walking about making brilliant patches of color against the green of the parade ground.
There were some older people, too, fathers and mothers of the boys, but the groups were mostly made up of young people, gay and excited with the exhilaration of the moment.
There were girls and matrons in the costume of French peasants wandering in and out among the visitors, carrying little baskets filled with ribbon-tied packages. Some of these packages contained candy, some just little foolish things to make the young folks laugh, favors to take away with them and remember the day by.
As the carryall stopped and one after another the girls jumped to the ground they were surprised to find that their nervousness, instead of growing less, was getting worse and worse all the time.
They were standing on the edge of things, wondering just what to do next and wishing some one would meet them when some one did just that very thing.
Paul Martinson spied the carryall from Three Towers Hall, called to a couple of his friends, and came running down toward the girls, his handsome face alight with pleasure.
“Hello!” he said. “We thought you were never coming. Say, you make all the other girls look like nothing at all.” He was supposed to be talking to them all, but he was looking straight at Billie.
But although the other girls noticed it, Billie did not. She was looking beyond Paul to where three boys, Teddy in the lead, were bearing down upon them.
After that the boys soon made their guests feel as if they had never been nervous in their lives, and they entered into the fun with all their hearts.
The parade of cadets was the most wonderful part of it all, of course, and the girls stood through it, their hearts beating wildly, a delicious wave of patriotism thrilling to their finger tips. And when it was over the girls looked at Teddy and Chet and Ferd and Paul with a new respect that the boys liked but did not understand at all.