tention, for at the sight of the three
pretty girls, strolling arm in arm down the main thoroughfare of the
town, more than one person turned for a second look.

"Gracious! What is it?" demanded Grace. "Did you see--some one, Billy?"

"No--something," came the answer from the dark girl with the boyish
name, and at a glance you could understand why she was called so. There
was such a wholesome, frank and comrade-like quality about her, though
she was not at all masculine, that "Billy" just suited.

"Look," she went on. "Isn't that a perfectly gorgeous display of
chocolates!" and she indicated the window of a confectionery store just
in front of them.

"Oh, I _must_ have some of those!" cried Grace Ford. "Come on in, girls!
I'll treat. They're those new bitter-sweet chocolates. I didn't know
Borker kept them. I'm simply dying for some!" and with this rather
exaggerated statement she fairly pulled her two chums after her into the
store.

"Look!" Grace went on, pausing a moment when inside the shop to glance
at the chocolate display in the show-window. "Did you ever see anything
so--so appetizing?"

"It looks like a display at a picnic candy kitchen," murmured she who
had been called Billy.

"Why, Mollie Billette!" reproached Grace Ford. "I think it's perfectly
splendid."

"But not appetizing," declared Amy Blackford. "I don't see how you can
think of eating any, when it's so near dinner time, Grace."

"We don't have dinner until seven, and it's only five. Besides, I'm not
going to eat many--now."

"No, she'll take a box home, and keep them in bed, under her pillow--I
know her," put in Mollie, alias Billy. "I slept with her one night and I
wondered whether she had lumps of coal, or some kitchen kindling wood
between the sheets. But it wasn't--it was chocolates! The box had worked
out from under her pillow in the night and----"

"Mollie Billette! You promised never to tell that!" pouted Grace. "I
don't care. They were hard chocolates, and didn't do any damage."

"No, and they weren't damaged, either," laughed Mollie. "I know we sat
up eating them until your mother came in and made us go to sleep. Oh,
Grace, you certainly are hopeless when it comes to chocolates!"

A smiling clerk came up to wait on the girls, and while Grace was
pointing out what she wanted, the two friends stood aside, talking in
low tones.

"Where are you going this summer?" asked Mollie, of Amy.

"I don't know. Henry isn't just sure wha