and very indignant eyes upon her chum. "I thought we were going to forget
school for a little while."

"Well, we're not going back for anything I forgot," Billie was asserting
when Violet Farrington, the third of the trio, interposed:

"If you two are going to quarrel on a day like this, I'm going home."

"Who said we were quarreling?" cried Billie, adding with a chuckle:
"We're just having what Miss Beggs" (Miss Beggs being their English
teacher) "would call an 'amiable discussion.'"

"Listen to the bright child!" cried Laura mockingly. "I don't see how
you ever get that way, Billie."

"Neither do I," replied Billie, adding with a chuckle as they turned to
stare at her: "Just natural talent, I guess."

The three chums--and three brighter, prettier girls it would be hard to
find--were on their way to the grammar school which had just closed the
week before. Laura had forgotten a book which she prized highly and was
in hope that the janitor, a good-natured old fellow, would let her in
long enough to get it. At the last minute she had asked the other girls
to go with her.

The three chums had lived in North Bend, a town of less than twenty
thousand people, practically all their lives. The girls loved it, for it
was a pretty place. Still, being only forty miles by rail from New York
City, they had been taken to the roaring metropolis once in a while as a
treat, and it was only with great difficulty that their parents had