“We were just as glad to see you, too, Billie,” said Elinor. “It was all a foolish mistake. But we shall be friends now, and you must join the Blue Birds. It’s the Sophomore Club, and we have lots of fun.”
“Thank you, I’d love to,” answered Billie, as gratefully and modestly as if she had been paid the highest honor in the land. “I’ve been thinking,” she added, “that we’d better keep all this business about these men secret. You know Cousin Helen; if she hears about it, we’ll probably have to store the motor car. She’ll never let me out of her sight again.”
“We’ll keep it secret,” cried the others in a chorus.
So this very sensational adventure, which would certainly have spread like wildfire through the town of West Haven once it got out, remained a profound secret.
Some good came of it, however, since it served to unite four old friends. But we have not seen the last of the mysterious individuals who borrowed Billie’s motor car.
CHAPTER IV.—PLOTS AND PLANS.
Belle Rogers was not always the bewitchingly pretty, dimpling, smiling young girl who had endeavored to annex Billie.
And when she was not pretty, Belle’s friends liked to keep well out of her vicinity. At such times two little white dents appeared on each side of her nose. Her large, china blue eyes were transformed into wells of steely gray and the smiling, baby mouth became two narrow white lips. All the color left her cheeks, and people who did not know her would exclaim:
“How faded and ill she looks!”
When Belle looked like this she was unusually quiet at first, but it was the quiet which comes before a tornado, and it was only when the storm burst that those unfamiliar with her ways realized that Belle had been very, very angry.