t, who was tall and dark and sweet-tempered.
She also acted as a sort of perpetual peace-maker between brown-eyed
Billie and blue-eyed Laura.

So now she was acting again on this glorious day in July when the roses
were out and the birds were singing and the sun was shining its
brightest.

"What shall we do if we can't get in?" suggested Billie, waving her hand
to Nellie Bane, another girl in her class, who passed on the opposite
side of the street.

"I suppose we'd have to go home again," answered Laura, adding with a
little worried frown: "Oh, I do hope I can get the book. I wouldn't lose
it for anything."

"There goes Amanda Peabody," cried Violet suddenly, clutching
Billie's arm.

"That makes no difference in my young life," Billie slangily assured her.

"As long as she _goes_, it's all right," added Laura, glancing after the
lanky figure of Amanda Peabody as the girl swung off in the other
direction.

Amanda Peabody was not popular with the girls. Nor was she with anybody,
for that matter. As far as the girls knew, she had not one friend in the
whole school.

Amanda was red-haired and freckled; and while these attributes alone
could not have accounted for her unpopularity, she added to them a
tendency to spy upon the other girls and then run and tell what she had
seen or heard.

It was this last characteristic that no fair-minded girl would tolerate
and so Amanda had lived in practical ostracism ever since she had come to
North Bend two years before.

"I don't think we ought to be too hard on her," said Violet, as they
turned the corner that brought the school into view. "She can't help her
mean disposition, I suppose. And anyway, Miss Beggs says there's always
some good to be found in everybody."

"Maybe," said Billie skeptically, "but hers is so small you would need a
microscope to see it. There's the janitor now, just going out. If we run
we can catch him."

And run they did, presenting themselves a minute later, rather red in the
face and out of breath, before a very much amused janitor.

"Hello," he cried, his twinkling eyes under their shaggy brows lighting
with pleasure as he looked at the girls. "Are you young ladies tryin' to
catch a train, or what?"

"Oh, no, no," cried Violet eagerly. "We were just trying to catch you,
Mr. Heegan."

"Oh-ho! An' it's mighty flattered I am," said Mr. Heegan, his Irish
brogue coming to the fore. "An' what, if I might be askin' you--"

"It's a book we