She was tall for her age, fifteen, with a frank, almost boyish face, fine gray eyes, and a rather large mouth which curled up at the corners when she smiled and showed two graduated rows of strong white teeth. Her light brown hair was parted in the middle and rolled on each side into a thick, knobby plait in the back.
“She’s not very strong on looks,” thought Nancy, who set great store on beauty herself, “but she’s got the nicest face I ever saw.”
“How did it happen?” asked Ben.
Then Billie told how the two men had duped her and left her behind the deserted house, and how she had found the message on the slip of paper.
“Then the men are coming back?” cried Elinor.
“Perhaps,” replied Billie, “and we’d better hurry away from here as fast as we can in case they come. They may not intend to do me any harm, but they are a very determined-looking pair of characters, as papa says, and one of them has a long pistol and a knife in his belt, for I saw them.”
“But what about the red motor?” demanded Nancy, whose yearning to ride in the car had somewhat biased her good judgment.
“I’ll just have to lose it, I suppose,” answered Billie.
“I have a scheme,” put in Charlie, who rarely spoke without due deliberation. “Miss Campbell is just about as tall as I am—she may be a little shorter,” he added, stretching himself to his full height.
The others smiled secretly at this, for Billie was at least an inch taller than Charlie, but they knew that the most sensitive spot in his nature was his height, since he was the oldest member of the party and Ben overtopped him by nearly three inches. And Charlie had a sneaking suspicion that he never would be tall enough. His bones were small and his frame as slender and delicate as a girl’s.