ion is in the warm weather, Connie,"
she said innocently, adding with a little look that made Connie want to
shake her: "It can't be anything _but_ the heat, can it? You haven't a
fever, or something?"

"No. But you'll have something beside a fever," threatened Connie, "if
you don't keep still."

"Say, stop your rowing, girls, and listen to me," Teddy interrupted,
picking a pebble from the dock and throwing it far out into the gleaming
water, where it dropped with a little splash. "Our famous parade of
cadets comes off next week. You're going to be on deck, aren't you?"

"We might," said Billie, with a demure little glance at him, "if somebody
would only ask us!"

CHAPTER IX

AMANDA AGAIN

The great day came at last and found the girls in a fever of mingled
excitement and fear. Excitement because of the great advent; fear,
because the sky had been overcast since early morning and it looked as if
the whole thing might have to be postponed on account of rain.

"And if there is anything I hate," complained Laura, moving restlessly
from her mirror over to the window and back again, "it's to be all
prepared for a thing and then have it spoiled at the last minute by
rain."

"Well, I guess you don't hate it any more than the rest of us," said
Billie, her thoughts on the pretty pink flowered dress she had decided to
wear to the parade. It was not only a pretty dress, but was very
becoming. Both Teddy and Chet had told her so. "And the boys would be
terribly disappointed," she added.

"I wonder," Vi was sitting on the bed, sewing a hook and eye on the dress
she had intended to wear, "if Amanda Peabody and The Shadow will be
there."

Laura turned abruptly from the window and regarded her with a reproachful
stare.

"Now I know you're a joy killer," she said; "for if Amanda Peabody and
The Shadow (the name the girls had given Eliza Dilks because she always
followed Amanda as closely as a shadow does) succeeded in getting
themselves invited to any sort of affair where we girls were to be, they
would be sure to do something annoying."

"They are going to be there, just the same," said Billie, and the two
girls looked at her in surprise. "They told me so," she said, in answer
to the unspoken question. "They have some sort of relatives among the
boys at the Academy, and these relatives didn't have sense enough not to
invite them."

"Humph!" grunted L