TOO MUCH TO EAT
If any one had told the three girls that the second day would hold more
of excitement and pleasure than the first, they would not have believed
it. But so it was.
Billie woke early that morning and found the sun shining gloriously
through the window. It took her a minute or two to realize just where
she was. Then she sat up in bed and looked across at her two sleeping
chums.
Laura lay on her side, hugging her pillow, and Violet was flat on her
back, blissfully unconscious of the ray of sunshine that fell across her
face.
Billie's glance traveled from them to Rose Belser, who looked as pretty
asleep as she did awake, and from her to Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks.
She made a little grimace as she looked at them, for their straight,
stringy hair and pinched, freckled faces were a striking contrast to
Rose's prettiness.
"Oh, I wish everybody'd get up," she thought. "It must be nearly seven
o'clock."
Even as she spoke the first bell rang, and the sudden sharp noise
through the still Hall made her start up in bed. It roused the other
girls, and they yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Goodness, is it time to get up already?" asked Laura, glaring at Billie
as if it were all her fault. "Why, I just this very minute got to
sleep."
"You'd better stop talking and get up," Rose called to them, flinging
back her black hair and jumping to her feet. "We have only half an hour
to get ready for breakfast, and if you're late and haven't any
excuse--well, don't expect any sympathy from Miss Cora, that's all."
The girls did not need any second hint to make them hurry, and full ten
minutes before the breakfast gong rang they were ready and waiting.
There was great excitement in the dining hall, for this was the day when
the old students of Three Towers Hall were expected, and the girls who
had remained at the school for the summer vacation were eager to renew
old friendships.
It was about ten o'clock when the girls began to pour in, and from then
on excitement and confusion reigned.
"It makes you feel kind of lonesome," said Laura, with a sigh.
"And the older girls look awfully dressed up and--and--stuck up," said
Vi, snuggling up to Billie as if for comfort. "Do you suppose they
really are, Billie--stuck up, I mean?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Billie, feeling a little nervous herself.
"For all we know," she added, with a chuckle, "we may look stuck up
ourselves."
"Well, maybe we are," Laura giggled. "That's what Amanda is always
calling us, you know."
"Oh, look," whispered Vi suddenly. "There's Rose Belser with one of the
new girls. I wonder who she is."
The new girl in question was a nice looking, rather serious girl who
wore glasses and looked to the girls--so they said later--as if she
might really like to study. She was carrying a grip and had evidently
just arrived.
While the girls watched, she and Rose turned and started in their
direction. For a minute Billie could have sworn Rose did not mean to
stop. However, she did stop, and rather reluctantly introduced the
stranger to them.
"This is Caroline Brant," she said, adding as she turned to the strange
girl with a queer little smile: "These are some of the new girls who are
in our dorm, Caroline. Billie Bradley, Violet Farrington and Laura
Jordon."
Caroline Brant shook hands and smiled a grave smile that seemed "just
made to go with her glasses," Laura said afterward. When the girl had
passed on with Rose toward the stairway, the chums had a queer sense of
comfort--as though they had found at least one good friend at Three
Towers Hall.
Lunch came and went, and so absorbed were the girls in the fun and
excitement of meeting new girls and listening to stories of good times
had during the summer that dinner caught them before they knew it and
they found that the day was gone.
Everybody went to bed early that night, for Miss Walters had sent around
an order that all lights should be out by nine o'clock sharp. The next
day the real work of the term was to begin, and she wanted all her girls
bright and fresh for the start.
The next week would have been perfect for the girls, but for one thing.
They liked their classrooms, which occupied all the second and third
floors, they liked their studies, and they loved most of their
teachers--especially Miss Race, the mathematics teacher.
But they soon found that what Rose Belser and Connie Danvers had said
about Miss Cora and Miss Ada Dill--the "Twin Dill Pickles," when nobody
was around--was terribly and awfully true.
The Dill twins never seemed to miss an opportunity to make the girls
feel bad. They were sarcastic in class, and seemed to take real delight
in hurting the feelings of their pupils whenever it was possible.
It was only a few days after the opening of the school year when Billie
had her first little set-to with Miss Cora Dill. The latter had just
finished calling the roll and had pushed the book from her. Then she
looked sharply at Billie.
"Your name is Beatrice, is it not?" she asked in a tone as acid as her
dill pickle nickname.
"Yes, Miss Dill," answered Billie, wondering nervously if there were
anything wrong about her name and miserably conscious that the eyes of
all the girls were upon her.
"But the girls call you 'Billie,' do they not?" asked Miss Cora.
"Yes," said Billie again.
"But 'Billie' is a boy's name," said Miss Cora tartly, boring Billie
through with her black eyes. "And it is extremely unladylike for a girl
to bear a boy's name. Extremely unladylike," she repeated, staring at
poor Billie, who was as red as a beet and filled with a wild desire to
run away and cry.
She might have done it, too, at least the crying part, but a titter from
one of the girls in the back of the room saved her. She was no longer
afraid, only angry--horribly angry.
So she just looked up in thin-lipped Miss Cora's face and said very
quietly: "I never thought about my name being unladylike, Miss Cora, and
I'm sure it hasn't made any difference with me. Mother says that it is
the way one acts that counts."
"Well, see that you take care of your actions," retorted Miss Dill
tartly, and turning to one of the other girls called upon her for a
recitation.
But it was Billie who had won the day. The girls knew it and Miss Cora
knew it, and this helped to make the latter feel in a still more
unkindly mood toward the girl with the "unladylike name."
"I'll watch her," thought Miss Cora angrily. "She isn't the kind to be
trusted."
Laura and Violet were furious, and when they returned to the dormitory
to prepare for lunch began to hatch all sorts of wild plans by which
they could "lay this one of the Dill Pickles low."
"What's the excitement?" asked Rose, and Laura began heatedly to
describe what had happened in the schoolroom, while several of the other
girls gathered around.
When she came to Billie's answer the girls looked pleased and one of
them clapped her hands.
"Good for you, Billie Bradley!" cried a dark girl, joyfully. "You must
have given the Dill Pickle the surprise of her life."
"She bearded the lion in his den, the Pickle in her Hall," quoted
another of the girls. "You know, I'd have given anything to have been
there."
"And you a new girl, too," said another, looking at Billie with admiring
eyes.
From that time on Billie became a noted figure among the hundred girls
at Three Towers Hall, and her fame and popularity grew in leaps and
bounds.
Rose Belser viewed this new state of affairs calmly at first, then with
alarm, and later with dismay. That a new girl should come to Three
Towers and immediately begin to shoulder herself into the limelight was
unthinkable, impossible, it couldn't be done. And yet Billie Bradley was
doing it!
After a while she began to draw away from Billie, look indifferent when
one of the girls spoke of her praisingly, slighted her in a hundred
little ways that Billie herself could hardy put her finger on. And yet
she felt it.
Billie had one other constant enemy at Three Towers, and that was Miss
Cora. Miss Cora never missed a chance to humiliate her--or at least try
to humiliate her. But Billie was so happy and having such a wonderful
time that she never gave these attempts any more attention than she
would so many mosquito bites, thereby fanning Miss Cora's dislike of
her.
Meanwhile the two Miss Dills grew more and more sour and crabbed until
the girls began to wonder "why they didn't die of it." Then one noon
time Laura came running into the dormitory, her eyes big and round with
excitement.
"What do you think?" she cried, while the girls gathered round her. "I
heard Miss Cora and Miss Ada talking together. I was in the lab and they
were in the hall and they didn't know I was anywhere around."
"Well?" asked the girls impatiently as she paused for breath.
"They were talking about our meals," Laura went on. "They said we got
altogether too much to eat."
"Too much to eat!" echoed the girls, looking at one another wonderingly.
"Why, we don't get any more than we want," said Billie.
"What else did they say, Laura?" urged Vi.
"That was about all." Laura had gone over to the wash basin and was
washing her hands hard as though to get some of her dislike of the "Dill
Pickles" out of her system. "I was so surprised I couldn't help hearing
a couple of sentences. Then I coughed and came out of the lab and they
looked as if they'd like to kill me. 'The girls are getting altogether
too much to eat,' said Miss Ada." Laura mimicked her to perfection.
"'Yes,' said Miss Cora, 'we must give them less--a good deal less.'"
"Well, I'd just like to see them try it, that's all," said Billie,
adding with a sigh: "Thank goodness, we still have Miss Walters, anyway.
She won't let us quite starve to death!"