Then they looked at
each other with horror written on their faces.

"Did you hear what I heard?" gasped Billie, when she could find her
voice.

"Yes, I heard," said Laura faintly. "Girls, do you think she could have
been telling the truth?"

"I don't see why she should want to fib about it," said Vi, feeling
rather bewildered. "She'd know we would soon find it out."

"Oh, but it's too awful!" burst out Billie suddenly. "Why, girls, it's
apt to spoil our whole year! Just think of having that sneak around,
prying into all our affairs and reporting every little thing we do."

"I guess the only way out of that is not to do anything she can report,"
said Violet ruefully, and Laura caught her up quickly.

"There you go taking all the fun out of it before we start," she said,
and in spite of their consternation the girls had to laugh.

"Why, you actually sound as if you intended to break the rules," said
Billie, drolly adding, with a prim little pucker of her mouth: "Laura,
I'm surprised at you."

"Listen to the good little girl talking," gibed Laura. "I never knew you
to get into any mischief, Billie,--oh, no!"

"Well, I won't quarrel with you about it," said Billie, calmly adding
with a little chuckle: "If we try to have any midnight feast at Three
Towers with sweet Amanda wandering round loose we will have to appoint a
guard to stand outside the door and warn us."

"I suppose that will be my job," said Violet plaintively. "It will be
lots of fun standing out in a drafty hall looking for Amanda while you
girls are having a feast."

"No, we'll fix it so it will be perfectly fair," said Billie soothingly.
"We'll draw lots or something."

"But I don't know what good a guard would do anyway," said Laura
dolefully. "There's something creepy about the way Amanda finds out
things. You think she's miles away and the next day she tells you more
about what you did than you know yourself."

"Maybe she has an accomplice," said Billie dramatically, and the girls
giggled.

"Anybody'd think Amanda was a criminal or something," said Laura, but
Billie shook her head decidedly.

"Uh-uh," she said. "I might like a good honest criminal but I'll be
jiggered--scuse me, ladies--if I can like Amanda Peabody! She's too
sly!"

CHAPTER VI

OFF FOR THREE TOWERS HALL

It was just two weeks to the time when the girls were to leave for Three
Towers Hall.

It seemed to them they would never get done all the things that the