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. "