nd they
won't be able to get away from the Academy to come here very often. I
suppose I'm an awful cat," she finished ruefully, "but I'm not going to
let her meet any of our boys if I can help it."

A little later she forgot all about her irritation in the delight of
walking about the beautifully kept grounds of Three Towers and examining
the outside of the picturesque old building itself.

The latter was even more beautiful than they had thought in their first
glimpse of it, with its rugged, ivy-grown walls and its
three-battlemented towers rising above the trees.

"It looks almost like an old castle," cried Billie. "The kind you read
about in 'The Days of Chivalry.' All it needs is a----"

"Moat," finished Laura excitedly. "I was just thinking that, Billie."

"Yes, a moat would make it just perfect," sighed Violet, adding, with a
laugh: "Anyway, even if we haven't the moat, we have a lake."

"Yes, let's go down and look at it," proposed Connie. "We've had
wonderful times on it all summer."

"Doing what?" asked Laura eagerly. "Do they let you row on it--all by
yourselves?"

"I should say not," answered Rose, with a little toss of her head. "You
have to learn to swim in the pool first so that if you upset your boat
you won't get drowned. It's their great boast that no girl has ever been
drowned at Three Towers."

"Well, we don't want to start anything," said Billie, with a little
grimace, and the girls laughed.

"Then," Rose went on, "after you learn to swim you have to take an
instructor out in the rowboat or canoe with you until she thinks you
know how to handle it like an expert."

"What do you mean by an instructor?" asked Vi. "One of the teachers?"

"Sometimes it's a teacher," Connie spoke up. "But as a rule it's one of
the older girls in the first grade who teaches the younger ones. Miss
Walters said," and her fair face flushed with pleasure, "that perhaps
next semester I shall be appointed as instructor."

"Oh, isn't that great?" cried Billie heartily, for she was beginning to
like Connie Danvers with all her heart. Then, too, she had noticed with
a feeling of relief that Connie was not dressed like Rose Belser. She
had on a pretty cloth dress very much like Billie's own. "And she didn't
seem crazy to know all about the boys," she added, with an added warmth
around her heart.

"I wonder," she said aloud, "how long it will take us girls to learn to
become instructors."

"Well, I don't know about