"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 the rest of us," spoke up Nellie Bane; "but I know it won't take you very long, Billie. You were always the very first to pick up anything."

As with most of the rest of Billie's friends, Nellie shared the conviction that Billie could do everything she tried to do just a little bit better than any one else.

"I should say so," Laura added loyally. "There's nothing that you can't do, Billie."

Billie flushed with pleasure and Rose Belser looked at her with new interest. For if Rose was not the most popular girl at Three Towers she certainly thought she was and the praise of Billie's friends started her thinking. Could it be possible that here was a rival? But she shook her dark head impatiently. If this Billie Bradley thought she could start anything, why, she, Rose, would show her, that was all!

And all the time Billie, who had no thought of what was going on in the other girl's mind, was having the time of her life.

"Look at all the canoes!" she cried. "And they actually have racks for them."

They had come down to a little dock that jutted out into the lake and had been hidden from their view, or at least partly so, by the trees.

Now, as they came out upon it, they stood astonished and delighted by the sight that met their eyes.

There were half a dozen racks on the dock, each one constructed so as to contain three canoes, one above the other, and every rack was full.

The canoes were each neatly covered with a tarpaulin, but the tarpaulin, drawn tight, revealed the long graceful outline of each beautiful little boat, and the girls fairly ached to launch one of them upon the water.

"And there are rowboats, too," cried Vi, making another discovery. "Lots and lots of them! Look! Here they are--tied to the dock."

Sure enough, there were fully a dozen gaily painted rowboats swaying gently in the water on either side of the dock, sometimes straining a little at the ropes that held them.

"But who would row when they could canoe?" cried Billie, for in Billie was a pa.s.sion for canoes which Chet had always declared must have come from her Indian ancestors. "I think rowboats are horribly clumsy."

"Hardly anybody really likes to row," Connie answered, "but we have to do it for the exercise, Miss Walters says there's no better exercise in the world than rowing."

"Yes," said Billie, with a little laugh. "And no harder work, either."

"Do you do much swimming in the lake?" asked Nellie, gazing down at her reflection in the still water.

"Oh, we can," Rose answered. "But no one likes it very much. They'd rather do their swimming in the swimming pool. There's a mud bottom to the lake, and the water, though it looks mighty nice, isn't good to drink."

While they were speaking two girls whom the chums remembered having seen in the dining hall but did not know came down to the dock, and, after waving to Rose and Connie, went to a rack and started to take down one of the canoes.

The girls watched rather wistfully while they slipped it from the rack, removed the cover, and slid it into the smooth water.

One girl with a skill born of experience jumped into the front seat of the canoe, lifted one of the paddles and waited while her companion settled herself in the stern seat. Then they glided from the dock softly, almost silently but for the dip of the paddles in the water, and drifted out toward the middle of the lake.

"Oh, if we could only do that," sighed Billie, "I think I'd die happy."

"Those girls are instructors," Connie explained. "They are in the first grade and expect to graduate in the spring."

"It's funny, I suppose," said Billie, dreamily gazing up at the blood red sun that was slowly sinking in the western sky, "but I'm really sorry for them."

"Why?" they asked, surprised.

"Because," said Billie soberly, "they have to graduate and leave Three Towers!"

CHAPTER XI

LIGHTS OUT

The girls sat up till the very last minute that night, discussing the absorbing happenings of the day. Rose left them to talk to some of the other girls--a fact for which they were thankful--and Nellie and Connie Danvers went to their dormitory, leaving the three chums alone at last.

They had had supper, a meal not as good as lunch, for the meat had been too crisp, almost burned in fact, and then they had come up to the dormitory for a good time together.

They were rather disgruntled to find that Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks were there before them, but even that fact could not bother them much--not to-night!

"I tell you what let's do," said Billie, patting her brown curls into place before her mirror and noticing with surprise how flushed her face was and how her eyes sparkled. How could she know, being modest, that not only her friends, but almost all the girls that had seen them together, thought her even prettier than Rose Belser.

"What?" asked Vi, sinking down on the edge of her bed with a sigh of content. "I don't feel as if I wanted to do any more for years but just sit here and talk things over."

"Well, that's just what I was going to say," Billie answered, turning away from the mirror and flinging herself on the bed beside her. "Only I thought it would be more comfortable if we got into our nighties. It's been a pretty warm day----"

"Billie, you're a wonder," cried Laura, jumping up and fishing in her bag for her nightgown. "When it comes to thinking you have it all over us like a tent--as Teddy says," she added apologetically, and the girls laughed at her.

"Oh, but there are our trunks!" cried Billie, suddenly remembering.

"Miss Walters said that we were to unpack our clothes and get everything in shape before to-morrow, don't you remember?"

"Oh, yes, we remember," groaned Violet. "I don't think much of your idea this time, Billie. Oh, well, I suppose if we must we've got to."