d we were quarreling?" cried Billie, adding with a chuckle:
"We're just having what Miss Beggs" (Miss Beggs being their English
teacher) "would call an 'amiable discussion.'"

"Listen to the bright child!" cried Laura mockingly. "I don't see how
you ever get that way, Billie."

"Neither do I," replied Billie, adding with a chuckle as they turned to
stare at her: "Just natural talent, I guess."

The three chums--and three brighter, prettier girls it would be hard to
find--were on their way to the grammar school which had just closed the
week before. Laura had forgotten a book which she prized highly and was
in hope that the janitor, a good-natured old fellow, would let her in
long enough to get it. At the last minute she had asked the other girls
to go with her.

The three chums had lived in North Bend, a town of less than twenty
thousand people, practically all their lives. The girls loved it, for it
was a pretty place. Still, being only forty miles by rail from New York
City, they had been taken to the roaring metropolis once in a while as a
treat, and it was only with great difficulty that their parents had
succeeded in luring them home again.

Among other things North Bend boasted a jewelry factory, of which Raymond
Jordon, Laura's father, was the owner.

Billie's father was the prominent Martin Bradley, well known among real
estate and insurance men, and it was from him that Billie, whose real
name was Beatrice, had taken her brown eyes and brown hair and even that
merry, irrepressible imp of mischief that made Billie Bradley the most
popular, best-loved girl in all North Bend.

Her mother, Agnes Bradley, quiet, sincere and beautiful to look upon,
kept just the check on her gay young daughter that the young girl needed.

Billie had a brother, Chetwood Bradley, commonly known as "Chet"--a boy
as different from his sister as night is from day, yet, in his own more
quiet way, extremely attractive.

Laura's brother, Theodore, known to his intimates as Teddy, was a
handsome boy, as full of wild spirits as Billie herself. Teddy had
entertained a lively admiration for Billie Bradley since he was seven and
she was six. Teddy was tall for his fifteen years, and had already made a
name for himself in the field of athletics.

The third of the chums was Violet Farrington, a daughter of Richard
Farrington, a well-known lawyer of North Bend, and Grace Farrington, a
sweet, motherly woman.

Nearly everybody loved Viole