“Paul Martinson’s father gave him a beautiful big motor boat—a cruising motor boat,” she told the girls. “Paul got the highest average in his class this term, you know, and his father has given him the motor boat as a sort of prize.”
“A motor boat!” cried Vi, breathlessly. “That’s some prize.”
“But, Billie, what’s that got to do with us?” asked Laura practically.
“It hasn’t much to do with us,” said Billie, her face pink with excitement. “But it has a great deal to do with the boys. Paul Martinson has asked Chet and Ferd and Teddy to go with him and his father on a cruise this summer.”
She paused from lack of breath, and the girls looked at her in amazement.
“My, that’s wonderful for them,” said Laura after a minute, adding a little regretfully: “But I suppose it means that we won’t see very much of the boys this summer.”
“Oh, but that’s just what it doesn’t mean!” Billie interrupted eagerly. “Don’t you see? Why, Teddy said that it would be the easiest thing in the world to stop off at Lighthouse Island some time and see us girls.”
The girls agreed that it was all perfectly wonderful, that everything was working just for them, and that this couldn’t possibly help being the most wonderful summer they had ever spent.
They did not have as much time to think about it as they would have liked, however, in the busy excited hours that followed. Right after the graduating exercises all the girls were to start for their homes, except the few who expected to spend the summer at Three Towers Hall.
Many of the relatives and friends of the graduates were expected, so that preparations had to be made for them also. The graduating exercises were to be held earlier at Boxton Military Academy than at Three Towers Hall, so that the three North Bend boys hoped to get away in time to attend—not the exercises themselves—but the singing on the steps of Three Towers Hall by all the students of the school, which was one of the most important parts of the ceremony.