Below them stretched the velvety lawn dotted with the darker green of shrubbery, while away through the trees glimmered and gleamed the water of Lake Molata. The day was warm for autumn, and a gentle breeze played among the leaves of the great trees bordering the lake, coming to the girls in a soft, rustling whisper. The picture was almost too perfect to be true.

"And she said," Billie murmured at last with a sigh of content, "that we could have all the afternoon to become acquainted with Three Towers."

"Yes," said Laura, turning from the window, "but I guess she meant only the inside of Three Towers. I don't believe they will allow us off the grounds so soon."

At that moment the door opened and the pretty girl that had pa.s.sed them in the hall entered and shut the door softly behind her. In the bright light of the room she seemed even prettier than she had in the hall, but there was something about her--Billie could hardly have told what, perhaps it was the expression of her mouth--that made Billie instinctively dislike her.

The strange girl's eyes rested on Amanda and Eliza where they sat in their corner, talking in whispers, and her lips curled disdainfully.

Then she came over to where Billie and her friends were standing.

"h.e.l.lo!" she said with a quick smile. "You're the new girls, I suppose, and we might as well get acquainted right away. My name is Rose Belser, and I'm from Brighting," mentioning a town several miles the other side of North Bend.

"We're awfully glad to know you," Billie answered, with her own particular friendly smile. "I'm Beatrice Bradley, and these are my two chums, Violet Farrington and Laura Jordon. We're from North Bend."

"Glad to know you," said Rose Belser with a quick little nod of her black head. Then she curled herself on the foot of Billie's bed and proceeded to make herself at home.

"I've been staying here for the summer," she told them. "It's an awful place to spend the summer, you know. First time I ever did it, and I never was so lonesome in my life."

"Why, I'd love to spend the summer here," said Vi, thinking of the beautiful country they had glimpsed and the lovely lake where one might row or canoe to his heart's content. "The country's so pretty, and you have the lake----"

"Oh, the lake!" the girl interrupted impatiently. "And the country! I'm tired to death of the lake and the country. I want to go to the city where you can wear pretty clothes and go to parties and things."

"But I should think you could wear pretty clothes here," said Billie, wondering. "And as to parties--I thought you always could have parties at boarding school----"

"Maybe you can at some boarding schools," the girl interrupted again with that same impatient toss of her head. "But those schools don't have Dill Pickles for guardian angels."

The girls looked at her as though she had gone crazy, and indeed for a moment they thought she had. But Rose Belser gave a short little laugh and went on to explain.

"The Dill Pickles are two old-maid sisters. One of them brought you up here----"

"Miss Dill!" cried Billie, beginning to see light. "Oh, has she a sister?"

"Yes. And the sister is worse," said the girl, with a little grimace.

"They are Miss Ada and Miss Cora, and Miss Cora is the terror of the Hall. If it weren't for Miss Walters----But say, you'd better hurry,"

she interrupted herself suddenly and jumped to her feet. "It's almost time for the lunch gong to ring, and if you're late for lunch, Miss Cora will be furious. She has charge of the dining hall, you know. You'd better wash and straighten your hair. Miss Cora looks you through with a gimlet eye."

She ran over to her wash basin, which happened to be the next one to Billie's, and began to wash her hands vigorously.

"Oh, dear, we forgot all about lunch, and we must be a sight!" cried Vi, pulling off her hat and excitedly patting her hair. "Girls, we haven't any combs--our trunks haven't come up yet. Give me a comb, somebody! Oh, here's one in my grip."

"How strange," mocked Billie, dashing cold water on her face till it shone rosily. "It almost seems to me I have one in mine also."

"Well, you'd better get busy and use it," Violet retorted, drawing her own comb through her heavy hair, "or you'll get in bad the very first day. Oh, dear! there's the gong." She stopped with her comb in the air and gazed in horror at the girls. As for Billie and Laura, they stood as if they had suddenly become paralyzed.

"If you'd start in time you'd be ready in time," said a nasal voice from the other end of the room, and the girls glanced around quickly. They had been so absorbed in their new experience that for a time they had completely forgotten Amanda and Eliza. But now they turned just in time to see the two girls leaving the room. As she shut the door behind her Amanda gave it a defiant little slam.

"Say, who's your friend?" asked Rose Belser, looking in astonishment at the closed door. "She's pleasant, isn't she?"

"They're neither of them friends of ours," said Billie, jerking her hair angrily as though she wished it had been Amanda's hair instead. "They just happen to come from the same town, that's all."

"Never mind about Amanda, Billie," pleaded Violet, looking uneasily at the door. "We're late----"

"Oh, don't worry," interrupted Rose, giving a final pat to her black hair. "That was only the first gong. The second one rings five minutes later. There it goes now. Are you ready?"

The girls were ready, and with quickly beating hearts they stepped out into the corridor.

CHAPTER IX

A NEW ACQUAINTANCE

"This way," said their new acquaintance, turning to the right and starting for the stairs. "Now for the second of the Dill Pickles. Long may she wave!" she added gaily.

It was a new experience for Billie Bradley and for Laura and Violet--that hour in the dining hall. The hall itself was an immense room and seemed at first glance to be made up almost entirely of windows. As Rose Belser afterward remarked to the girls, there was one thing that no one at Three Towers Hall had to complain of, and that was lack of light.

Three tables stretched almost the entire length of the hall, and although they all bore snowy cloths there was only one of them that was really "set for action," as Laura said.

Most of the girls had already a.s.sembled when the chums reached the dining hall. They were standing around in little groups of two or three, talking excitedly, and while the girls were hesitating which group to join Miss Cora Dill swept into the room.

"Now you'd better mind your Ps and Qs," Rose whispered to them, and the girls regarded with interest the second of the Dill twin sisters who had been called by the disrespectful name of the "Twin Dill Pickles."

Miss Cora Dill was indeed Miss Ada's counter-part. There was the same thin figure and straight back, the same black eyes and thin-lipped mouth, the only difference being that where Miss Ada's hair was white, Miss Cora's hair still retained some traces of its original brown color.

"Goodness, I'm glad there's some way we can tell them apart," said Billie to Laura in an under-tone. "If they were just exactly alike we'd have to do with them the way they do with twin babies--tie a blue ribbon on one and a pink ribbon on the other."

The idea of tying a pink ribbon or any other kind of ribbon on the "Twin Dill Pickles" was so ridiculous that the girls giggled aloud, thereby causing Vi to nudge Billie sharply.

"Sh-h," she whispered. "Her Highness is about to speak."

Miss Cora carried some cards in her hands, and as the girls gathered about her she asked them to answer when she called out their names.

Although there were a hundred students in Three Towers Hall, there were only half a dozen who, like pretty Rose Belser, had spent the summer at the school.

The rest of the girls were almost all from North Bend and the other surrounding towns, although a few had come from a distance.

When the girls had all reported present, Miss Cora gave them their seats at the table and took her own place at the head of it.

At first the girls were not at all sure whether they were supposed to talk or not, for the presence of thin-lipped Miss Cora at the head of the table threw rather a damper on both their enthusiasm and their appet.i.tes.

However, when Rose Belser leaned across several girls to say something to Billie the rest of the girls took courage and a little murmur of conversation traveled around the table.

The lunch was a satisfying one, and the girls, beginning to recover from their excitement and being really hungry from the long train trip, ate heartily.

But every once in a while, when the talk and laughter about the table threatened to become too hilarious, the girls were conscious of Miss Cora's voice reminding them that the table was the "place for decorum--not for rioting."