"There it is," she said, running to a desk at the farther end of the room
and picking up from an inner corner a prettily bound book. "Just the very
place I left it, too. My, but I'm glad to get it back again."

"What do you think you're doing, Billie Bradley?" inquired Laura a
minute later, for Billie had seated herself at the teacher's desk and was
looking as severe as she knew how.

"Take your seats," she now commanded, rapping vigorously on the desk and
fixing them with her best school-teacher stare. "Violet Farrington, go to
the board--"

But she got no further, for with an indignant cry the girls had rushed on
her. Dropping both her air of command and her dignity, Billie scurried
wildly around the room, keeping the desks between her and her pursuers.

"You can't catch me! You can't catch me!" she taunted them, as she
dodged nimbly in and out among the desks. "I could keep this up all day,
I could--"

"Oh, you could, could you?" cried Laura, and, making a desperate lunge,
she almost had her hand on Billie's dress. "We'll see about that. Billie!
what are you doing?"

For Billie had suddenly doubled on her tracks, rushed to the back of the
room, put her foot upon a steam radiator pipe and was trying to clamber
to the top of a bookcase.

It was a tall bookcase, and on the top of it stood a marble statue.