CHAPTER IX
AMANDA AGAIN
The great day came at last and found the girls in a fever of mingledexcitement and fear. Excitement because of the great advent; fear,because the sky had been overcast since early morning and it looked as ifthe whole thing might have to be postponed on account of rain.
"And if there is anything I hate," complained Laura, moving restlesslyfrom her mirror over to the window and back again, "it's to be allprepared for a thing and then have it spoiled at the last minute byrain."
"Well, I guess you don't hate it any more than the rest of us," saidBillie, her thoughts on the pretty pink flowered dress she had decided towear to the parade. It was not only a pretty dress, but was verybecoming. Both Teddy and Chet had told her so. "And the boys would beterribly disappointed," she added.
"I wonder," Vi was sitting on the bed, sewing a hook and eye on the dressshe had intended to wear, "if Amanda Peabody and The Shadow will bethere."
Laura turned abruptly from the window and regarded her with a reproachfulstare.
"Now I know you're a joy killer," she said; "for if Amanda Peabody andThe Shadow (the name the girls had given Eliza Dilks because she alwaysfollowed Amanda as closely as a shadow does) succeeded in gettingthemselves invited to any sort of affair where we girls were to be, theywould be sure to do something annoying."
"They are going to be there, just the same," said Billie, and the twogirls looked at her in surprise. "They told me so," she said, in answerto the unspoken question. "They have some sort of relatives among theboys at the Academy, and these relatives didn't have sense enough not toinvite them."
"Humph!" grunted Laura, "Amanda probably hinted around till the boyscouldn't help inviting her. Look--oh, look!" she cried in such adifferent tone that the girls stared at her. "The sun!" she said. "Oh,it's going to clear up, it's going to clear up!"
"Well, you needn't step on my blue silk for all that," complained Vi, asLaura caught an exultant heel in the latter's dress.
"Don't be grouchy, darling," said Laura, all good-nature again now thatthe sun had appeared. "My, but we're going to have a good time!"
"I'll say we are," sang out Billie, as she gayly spread out the pinkflowered dress upon the bed. "And we're not going to let anybody spoil iteither--even Eliza Dilks and Amanda Peabody."
The girls had an hour in which to get ready, and they were ready andwaiting before half that time was up. The Three Towers Hall carryall wasto call for the girls who had been lucky enough to receive invitationsfrom the cadets of Boxton Military Academy, and as the girls, lookinglike gay-colored butterflies in their summery dresses, gathered on thesteps of the school there were so many of them that it began to look asif the carryall would have to make two trips.
"If we have to go in sections I wonder whether we'll be in the first orsecond," Vi was saying when Billie grasped her arm.
"Look," she cried, merriment in her eyes and in her voice. "Here comeAmanda and Eliza. Did you ever see anything so funny--and awful--in yourlife?"
For Amanda and her chum were dressed in their Sunday best--poplin dresseswith a huge, gorgeous flower design that made the pretty, delicate-coloreddresses of the other girls look pale and washed-out by comparison. IfAmanda's and Eliza's desire was to be the most noticeable and talked-ofgirls on the parade, they were certainly going to succeed. The talk hadbegun already!
However, the arrival of the carryall cut short the girls' amusement, andthere was great excitement and noise and giggling as the girls--all whocould get in, that is--clambered in.
There were about a dozen left over, and these the driver promised to comeback and pick up "in a jiffy."
"I'm feeling awfully nervous," Laura confided to Billie. "I neverexpected to be nervous; did you?"
"Yes, I did," Billie answered truthfully. "I've been nervous ever sincethe boys invited us. It's because it's all so new, I guess. We've neverbeen to anything like this before."
"I'm frightened to death when I think of meeting Captain Shelling,"Connie leaned across Vi to say. "From what the boys say about him he mustbe simply wonderful."
"Paul had better look out," said Laura slyly, and Connie drew backsharply.
"I think you're mean to tease Connie so," spoke up Vi. "She doesn't likePaul Martinson any better than the rest of us do, and you know it."
"Oh, I do, do I----" began Laura, but Billie broke in hastily.
"Girls," she cried, "stop your quarreling. Look! We're at the Academy.And--look--look----" Words failed her, and she just stared wonderingly atthe sight that met her eyes. It was true, none of them had ever seenanything like it before.
Booths of all sorts and colors were distributed over the parade ground,leaving free only the part where the cadets were to march. Girls inbright-colored dresses and boys in trim uniforms were already walkingabout making brilliant patches of color against the green of the paradeground.
There were some older people, too, fathers and mothers of the boys, butthe groups were mostly made up of young people, gay and excited with theexhilaration of the moment.
There were girls and matrons in the costume of French peasants wanderingin and out among the visitors, carrying little baskets filled withribbon-tied packages. Some of these packages contained candy, some justlittle foolish things to make the young folks laugh, favors to take awaywith them and remember the day by.
As the carryall stopped and one after another the girls jumped to theground they were surprised to find that their nervousness, instead ofgrowing less, was getting worse and worse all the time.
They were standing on the edge of things, wondering just what to do nextand wishing some one would meet them when some one did just that verything.
Paul Martinson spied the carryall from Three Towers Hall, called to acouple of his friends, and came running down toward the girls, hishandsome face alight with pleasure.
"Hello!" he said. "We thought you were never coming. Say, you make allthe other girls look like nothing at all." He was supposed to be talkingto them all, but he was looking straight at Billie.
But although the other girls noticed it, Billie did not. She was lookingbeyond Paul to where three boys, Teddy in the lead, were bearing downupon them.
After that the boys soon made their guests feel as if they had never beennervous in their lives, and they entered into the fun with all theirhearts.
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 deliciouswave of patriotism thrilling to their finger tips. And when it was overthe girls looked at Teddy and Chet and Ferd and Paul with a new respectthat the boys liked but did not understand at all.
Several times during the afternoon they came across Eliza and Amanda andtheir escorts--who did not look like bad boys at all. But only once didthe girls try to shove to the front.
It was when Teddy and Paul had taken Billie and Connie over to the icecream booth for refreshments, the other boys and girls having wanderedoff somewhere by themselves.
Billie was standing up near the counter when Eliza Dilks deliberatelyelbowed her way in ahead of her.
Billie began to feel herself getting angry, but before she could sayanything, Teddy spoke over her shoulder.
"Please serve us next," he said to the pleasant-faced matron who hadcharge of this part of the refreshments. "Some of these others just camein and belong at the end of the line."
"Yes, I noticed you were here first," the woman answered, and handedBillie her ice cream over Eliza's head while Eliza, with a glance atBillie that should have killed her on the spot, turned sullenly andwalked away.
"Teddy, you're a wonder," murmured Billie under her breath. "I couldn'thave done it like that myself."
After this encounter Billie and her party wandered over to the dancingpavilion on the outside of which they met Laura and Vi and their escortsfor the afternoon.
"Isn't this the dandiest band in the world?" si
ghed Billie in supremecontent. "Such music would make--would make even Amanda Peabody dancewell."
"Oh, come, Billie, that's too much!" laughed Teddy, swinging her on tothe floor and giving her what she called a heavenly dance.
And indeed what could have been better fun than this dance on a smoothfloor so large that it did not seem crowded, to the best of music, with apartner who was a perfect dancer, and--though Billie did not say this toherself--by a girl who was herself as light and graceful a dancer as wason the floor?
All things must end, even the most perfect day in a lifetime, as Vicalled it, and finally the girls had been tucked into the carryall andwere once more back at Three Towers Hall, ready, with a new day, to takeup the routine of school life once more.