Billie Bradley and the School Mystery: or, The Girl From Oklahoma

CHAPTER VII
A TALE OF RICHES

It was some time later that Billie Bradley was directed to the person she sought by the sound of heart-broken sobbing.

Silently, she made her way through the underbrush until she descried a figure in rumpled shirtwaist and pleated skirt, lying face downward on the thick grass.

“Please don’t cry,” said Billie. “And don’t run away. I’ve brought you some supper.”

At the sound of Billie Bradley’s voice, Edina Tooker jumped to her feet and looked wildly about her. She dashed a hand across her eyes and then turned, as though about to dart off into the woods.

“Wait a minute!” cried Billie. “I’ve brought you some sandwiches and two luscious pieces of cake. If pressed,” she added lightly, “I might consent to eat some with you.”

As the girl paused and looked toward her, trying to pierce the darkness, Billie knew she had struck the right note. A friendly, offhand manner would win Edina Tooker more quickly than sympathy.

“Clarice has packed the basket to the top, bless her old black heart. We’ll find a nice flat rock and regale ourselves to our hearts’ content.”

Billie found the rock without more delay and seated herself upon it, the basket between her knees.

After a moment of indecision Edina followed and flung herself full length on the ground beside Billie.

“Why did you come after me?” she queried listlessly. “You might better have left me alone.”

The statement was not made ungraciously nor sullenly; it was merely as though the girl were unutterably weary and could not imagine anyone taking a legitimate interest in her or her affairs.

Billie said nothing, but handed out sandwiches and cake, which the girl accepted ravenously.

“I’m hungry,” she said simply. “I haven’t had a bite to eat since noon.”

“You should have come in to supper,” said Billie, nibbling at a piece of the matchless cake. “Debsy might have given you a bad mark for being late, but she couldn’t have kept you from eating your supper.”

“I didn’t want any then. I couldn’t go in and face those jeering, snickering girls.” Edina Tooker clenched her hands and spoke with a sudden, desperate vehemence. “They think I’m a big joke and I – I hate them. I could kill them all!”

Billie waited patiently for the storm to pass. Then she said gently:

“Have a piece of cake, Edina. You’ve no idea how good it is.”

“I don’t want any cake,” said Edina sullenly. She sat up, very stiff and straight, her hands locked about her humped knees. “I don’t want anything. To-morrow I’m going back home.”

Billie was startled.

“You are leaving Three Towers?”

Edina nodded unhappily.

“Three Towers has no use for me. I ain’t ever been so unhappy in my life as I’ve been since I come – came – here. I never dreamed it would be like this.”

“What did you think it would be like?” asked Billie gently.

“I don’t know – exactly. But I thought people would be kind and I’d have a chance to git some book learnin’ like I never had in my life. And I always wanted it, ever since I was old enough to ride my own cow pony. And now I – I gotta go home.”

There was a choke in the quiet, sullen voice. Billie guessed what it would mean for Edina to return to the “cow country,” carrying wounds that would never heal.

She said quietly:

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you, Edina. I wouldn’t run away.”

It was dark down there by the lake, but Billie could sense the quick motion of the girl’s head as it turned toward her.

“You oughtn’t to say that to me.” After a while she added in a hopeless tone:

“Mebbe it would be runnin’ away like you say, mebbe it would be quittin’. Jest the same,” her voice rose passionately, “I’d ruther be horsewhipped than stand another week like the one I’ve just gone through!”

Billie waited a moment, then reached out and touched Edina’s clenched fist where it rested on her voluminous skirt.

“Suppose you tell me something about yourself,” she suggested. “I think I can help you. I want to. I owe you something, you know, for saving my life.”

Edina hesitated for a moment; then began in a low, monotonous voice to tell the drab story of her life.

“Seems like we’ve always been poor, Paw and Maw and me,” began Edina. “Ever since I was a little shaver, I can’t remember anything but poverty. Paw was what you’d call a prospector.”

“Gold?” asked Billie.

“No, oil. He had some property and he was always sure there was oil on it. Seems to me I can never remember the time he wasn’t drillin’ holes somewheres tryin’ to strike a gusher.

“Maw and me we got fed up with it, what with bein’ holed up in the same little neck of the woods all the time and never goin’ nowheres nor havin’ nothing. There were days we went hungry – ”

The droning voice broke off suddenly and Billie had a startlingly clear vision of that tragic little family, dying of monotony, starving a good deal of the time, with nothing but a vision to sustain them.

“The worst of it was,” the quiet voice continued, “that I never got much schoolin’ and I always wanted it. I thought it would be heaven if the time ever come – came – when I could go to a real school like other girls and learn the sort of things that were put in books —

“It just goes to show,” said Edina, after another pause, “that things ain’t never the way you’d expect they’d be. When Paw struck oil – ”

“He did?” ejaculated Billie.

“I thought me and Maw must be the happiest pair on earth. When Paw said I could come East and go to school here, I thought I’d die, I was that crazy with joy. And now here I am – and – and you see how it is. I can’t hardly go back and face Maw, seems like.”

Billie was thinking swiftly.

“If your father has struck oil on his property, he must be making a good deal of money, Edina.”

“Guess so.” The girl shrugged indifferently. “Paw said if the gusher kept on gushin’ we’d probably be millionaires before we got through. But what good’s it goin’ to do me,” hopelessly, “if I ain’t even goin’ to git an education out of it? I’m – goin’ back home – to-morrow.”

Billie came to a swift decision.

“You are going to do no such thing, Edina Tooker! You are going to stay right here at Three Towers Hall, and before long the girls will be begging your pardon for ever having dared to laugh at you!”

CHAPTER VIII
BILLIE AGAINST HER WORLD

There was a moment of silence broken only by the night sounds of the woods and the gentle lapping of the lake against the shore.

Then Edina Tooker drew a long, tremulous breath.

“It – sounds like – a fairy tale,” she said huskily. “Seems like I’d have to change a lot to have that happen.”

“So you will,” said Billie Bradley eagerly. She was beginning to warm to her plan as it took form in her mind. “Not in yourself, you understand, but in, well, in externals – like clothes, for instance.”

There! It was out! Even in the darkness Billie could guess at the hot flush that mantled the face of the girl from the West. As the silence continued and Edina sat with clenched hands, staring out toward the lake, Billie began to fear she had gone too far – that Edina’s fierce pride would resent the insinuation in her friendly suggestion.

In a moment, however, Edina’s quiet voice put her fears to rest.

“Everything about me’s wrong. Don’t you think I know that? All I need is eyes in my head to tell me I don’t stack up against these girls here with their purty clothes and their airs and graces. We’re a hundred – a thousand miles apart.”

“Would you like to be like them, Edina – look like them, I mean?”

For the first time the girl showed animation.

“Oh, would I just!” she breathed. “Would I just! But I don’t know how. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Well, I would,” said Billie. “I’ll guarantee to make you over into a perfect picture of the modern schoolgirl, Edina Tooker, as soon as – well, as soon as we can get a day off to do some shopping.”

“Would you help me?” asked Edina, in a stifled tone. “Would you?”

“You’d be surprised,” Billie retorted gaily. “I hope you have some sort of indelible identification mark on you, Edina Tooker. Otherwise, when I get through with you, you won’t know yourself!”

There was no doubt but that the girl from Oklahoma, Billie’s “rough diamond,” was dazzled by the prospect.

“It don’t seem hardly possible, but if you could fix me up like you say, I’d be grateful to you all the rest of my life.”

“There’s only one condition,” said Billie severely; “and that is that you will agree to do exactly as I tell you, that you will let me have my own way about everything. It’s the only way I can get results.”

“Done!” cried Edina, and reached out a big rough hand that almost crushed Billie’s little one in its grip. “You’re sure a good sport and I’m sorry for the way I – I talked to you before.”

“That’s all right.” Billie began to gather up the remnants of the basket lunch. “We’d best be getting back to the Hall or they will be sending out a posse in search of us. Besides, I promised Vi I’d help her with her math.”

As the two girls approached the Hall, Edina walking close to Billie, her eyes downcast and sullen, they found that the school grounds were almost deserted.

The groups of girls had broken up and scattered indoors, most of them for study, some few of them for reading or other diversions, some merely to enjoy that half hour or so of school gossip they all found so enjoyable.

Billie found that a few of her friends still lingered in the grounds. Laura and Vi with Connie Danvers and Ray Carew were discussing the tennis tournament which was to be an exciting feature of the fall term.

These girls turned interested and speculative eyes toward Billie and her companion.

Edina would have avoided Billie’s friends. She murmured something under her breath about having to get back to her dormitory; but Billie seized her hand and drew her on toward the group of amused and interested girls.

“You promised you’d do as I say,” she reminded her companion. “And the first thing you’ve got to learn is never to run away from any situation. You’ve got to square your chin and look it straight in the eye.”

Billie marched straight up to her friends, Edina’s big, rough hand clenched tightly in her own.

“Girls,” she said, in her forthright fashion, “Edina Tooker and I have decided to be friends. We are going to be the best of pals from now on. And I am depending upon all my friends to be nice to her.”

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. The girls did not like Edina Tooker. Nevertheless, they knew that if Billie took her up, sooner or later they would all be forced to accept her. Not too graciously, they bowed to the inevitable.

“Anything you say goes with me, Billie,” Laura observed.

“Me, too,” said Vi.

“Welcome to the fold, Edina,” drawled Ray Carew.

“We welcome you as one of ourselves,” added Connie, the sarcasm behind her words not too well disguised.

“I knew you would,” said Billie sweetly, wanting, privately, to slap them all. To her new protégé she said: “It’s only Tuesday, Edina. We will have to wait until Saturday, I guess, to get a day off and carry out our plans. Remember, we are going to make them all sit up and take notice. Until then, don’t forget our bargain.”

“I won’t,” returned Edina. She released her hand from Billie’s and without so much as a good-by to the other girls made her way through the beautiful grounds toward the first-year dormitories. In that beautiful setting, she looked grotesque enough, as much out of place as the proverbial bull in the china shop.

“Well, I see you’ve gone and done it, Billie,” sighed Vi. “I was afraid you would. But it’s no use. You can’t tame that girl.”

“Like making friends with a lion cub,” observed Laura. “You never can tell when it will turn and rend you with its fangs. That sounds a bit far-fetched, but I guess you catch my meaning.”

Billie shook her head.

“You’re dead wrong, all of you. Edina isn’t a bit like that. She is headstrong and untamed, I’ll admit; but at heart she’s very much like the rest of us, wanting what we want and desperately anxious for an education.”

Ray Carew’s mocking laugh floated on the darkness.

“I hadn’t an idea you were so credulous, Billie. The girl is nothing but a savage. If you try to help that sort of person you will only get your trouble for your pains. I’m warning you.”

It was being slowly borne in upon Billie Bradley that she was alone in her championship of the strange, lonely girl from Oklahoma. Her friends, the girls upon whom she depended for understanding and support in what she had come to regard as an interesting and even exciting experiment, were subtly, but none the less decidedly, ranging themselves against her.

She turned to Connie Danvers.

“Do you feel that way about it, too, Connie?” she asked.

“I’m willing to be nice to anybody, if you say so, Billie. But I can’t help thinking you are making a mistake, taking up this freak girl from Oklahoma. It seems to me you are letting yourself in for a heap of trouble.”

“You feel that way about it, too, Vi?”

“’Fraid I do, Billie. Though I’ll try to be nice to her, if you say so.”

“And you, Laura?”

“You will never be able to make anything of that sort of girl, Billie. She has nothing in common with the rest of us. If you try to take her up, you will be only wasting your time. I feel sure of it.”

Billie was silent for a moment. She was troubled and hurt, but the defection of her friends in no wise altered her determination to help the strange, wild, half-tamed girl from Oklahoma.

“Very well,” she said quietly. “I am glad to know how you all stand, anyway. From now on, it will be my business to prove you wrong!”

As Billie limped up the gravel path alone, there was a curious weight upon her spirit. The disapproval of her friends was a new experience to her. Even Vi and Laura had deserted.

“I’ll show them I can make something of Edina Tooker!” she told herself. “I’ll make them admit it! I’ve got to now, to justify myself.”

CHAPTER IX
THE EXPERIMENT

Billie Bradley awoke next morning with the same curious weight upon her spirit. Her mental depression was augmented by bodily discomfort that had grown no less overnight.

Every muscle in her body was strained and there were big, black bruises on her arms and legs, some of them as big as the palm of her hand.

“You will go picking goldenrod!” gibed Laura with sympathetic interest, watching Billie’s painful effort to dress herself. “Next time you feel in the humor to visit Goldenrod Point – ”

“I’ll run the other way,” said Billie, with a grimace. “Bother! I wanted to get out on the courts for practice to-day.”

“From the look of those arms and legs, it will be many a day before you can swing a wicked racket, Billie,” observed Vi. “Here, I’ll help you with that stocking. Give me a chance to show what an excellent lady’s maid I’d make.”

Between them, they managed to get Billie dressed in time for breakfast. It was not until the bell rang and there was a general exodus into the corridors from the dormitory that Laura broached the subject that was uppermost in the minds of them all.

“How about this lion cub from Arizona – ”

“Oklahoma,” Billie corrected, a trifle frigidly.

“Well, Oklahoma, then. You aren’t really going to wish her on the crowd, are you, Billie? If you insist, the girls will take her up for your sake, but there will be trouble. I feel it in my bones.”

“I have no intention of wishing her on anyone,” retorted Billie coldly. “The girl saved my life and I am going to help her to be happy here at Three Towers Hall, if such a thing is possible. You girls may do as you like.”

Vi put an arm about Billie’s shoulders.

“Don’t be sore, Billie. If I can’t share your enthusiasm for this wild girl from the West, I am quite willing to admit that you are probably right and I’m wrong. Anyway, perhaps it’s worth giving it a whirl.”

With such tepid support, Billie was forced to be content.

On the way to the breakfast hall they passed Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks. The latter called to Billie and reminded her jeeringly not to forget that she had a date with Debsy at ten o’clock that morning.

Billie flushed and pressed her lips tight together to prevent a sharp retort.

“Some people never get enough,” she said in a low voice to Laura and Vi as they entered the dining hall. “So far we have beaten Amanda and her Shadow at every game they have ever tried to play with us, and still they come around looking for more trouble.”

Across the length of the hall, Billie’s eyes sought and found Edina Tooker. A look flashed between the two girls that was observed by more than one curious pair of eyes in that room.

Billie’s look seemed to say:

“Hold on! Have courage. I am going to fulfill my promise.”

While Edina, still a figure of fun in her outrageous clothes, seemed to respond:

“I’m depending on you. Don’t fail me. You’re my only hope.”

That was the beginning of a period of acute discomfort for Billie Bradley.

It began with Miss Debbs’ decision to give Billie two demerits, instead of one. Billie could never quite understand the reason, except that Miss Debbs was thorough in everything she undertook, including her methods of discipline.

Billie knew that the punishment was too severe, totally out of proportion to her fault. For a time she even considered taking her grievance to Miss Walters, the white-haired, gracious head of Three Towers Hall, adored by the girls and universally respected for her fine sense of justice.

Billie finally decided against this, however, accepting the unjust punishment with mental reservations and the determination to earn no more demerits during the remainder of the fall term.

To add to Billie’s discomfort, Edina took to following her about like a humble and adoring shadow. Unpleasant Edina could be, and often was – snappish and curt, even downright rude – but never so to Billie. Her outspoken devotion was embarrassing; yet, in her secret heart, Billie could not but be gratified by it.

Edina was known among the girls as “Billie’s little lamb,” or “Billie’s lion cub.”

If Billie was sensitive to the only partially disguised amusement that followed them wherever they went, Edina was even more so.

She noticed, even before Billie did, that subtle drawing off of the other girls, even from their adored Billie. Edina spoke of this one day, in her clumsy, blundering way.

“You’re gettin’ yourself in a heap of trouble, tryin’ to be nice to me. I seem to make trouble for every one I – like. I’d best go back to Oklahoma to Paw and Maw and leave you in peace.”

“Nonsense!” said Billie, eying her protégé sharply. “You aren’t getting cold feet at this late date, are you?”

Edina shook her head.

“No, I’m willin’ to stick. The girls ain’t been so mean since you’ve been nice to me. I’m gettin’ some book learnin’, too,” the round face shone suddenly with eagerness. “I don’t do so bad in my classes.”

“You are doing splendidly,” Billie encouraged her. “I was speaking to Miss Arbuckle about you yesterday, and she said that if all her students were as eager to learn as you, her task would be much easier. She was as pleased as punch with you, Edina.”

The girl’s face beamed with a sudden radiant happiness.

“That sort of makes up for all the rest,” she said eagerly.

Edina in this mood was very attractive to Billie. She eyed her with sympathetic interest for a moment, then said curiously:

“You’ve something on your mind, Edina. Out with it!”

“I was thinkin’ about you,” returned the girl hesitantly, stammering and flushing as she spoke. “The girls you go around with don’t like me. Oh, it don’t take a microscope to see that,” with sudden bitterness, as Billie made a negative gesture. “And because you’re nice to me they – they are sort of drawing off from you, too.”

Billie was startled. In a vague way she had noticed some such thing herself. Was her friendship for Edina Tooker imperiling her popularity?

When she did not speak, Edina continued:

“You’ve been the most popular girl up here. It didn’t take a microscope for me to see that neither – either. There’s no use your sp’ilin’ – spoilin’ – all that for me. I’d best go back to Oklahoma, like I said.”

Billie roused herself. She laughed and her mouth compressed itself into a rather fierce straight line. This was Billie Bradley’s “fighting face.”

“I think you are wrong, Edina. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. But if there’s a chance in the world that you’re right – then I want to know it. Don’t you see? I’d simply have to be sure!”

Edina was watching her with a half-fearful eagerness.

“Then you mean – ”

“I mean we will go ahead with our plans just as we planned them!” said Billie. She jumped to her feet with swift decision. “I have already spoken to Miss Walters about a shopping tour to Fleetsburg.” Fleetsburg was the next town to Molata, a fairly cosmopolitan place with several large stores and a theater. “Some of the girls want to go to a matinée and Miss Arbuckle is to chaperone them. We are to go in the school bus and may have the whole day to spend as we like. We will buy clothes and other pretties till we’re weary. You and I, Edina Tooker, are going to have a very large time!”

Edina caught her breath. The wistful longing in her round, red face was pitiful to Billie. She caught Billie’s hand and squeezed it hard.

“You’re awful good to me. Seems like I never thought anybody could be so good.”

“No thanks, please!” cried Billie gaily. “Anyway, my work will bring its own reward. When we return to Three Towers Hall to-morrow you are going to be everybody’s ideal of what a perfect, modern schoolgirl should be!”

Edina’s gratitude, her eager anticipation, warmed Billie’s heart. She carried her mood of elation to bed with her and woke with it in the morning.

“To-day is going to be one of the most interesting I have ever lived through,” she thought. “The look on the girls’ faces when they see my new edition of Edina will be worth all the trouble. Only,” her face clouded, “I wish Laura and Vi could share the fun with me.”