Miss Walters smiled, as though at some secret thought of her own. Reaching into the letter she drew forth a long yellow slip.
“Your father asked me to give you this check--to help him celebrate, he said.”
Edina took the slip of paper without pausing to read the illiterate scrawl across its face. Her eyes were on Miss Walters’ face.
“You been so awful good to me,” she muttered.
“You are worth being good to, Edina,” said Miss Walters, smiling. “Billie and I have always believed that--haven’t we, Billie?”
Miss Walters held out a hand and Edina slipped her clumsy red one into it. At the touch, all the iron in Edina’s nature suddenly melted before a turbulent flood of emotion.
She flung herself to her knees beside Miss Walters, and buried her face in her lap, harsh sobs tore at her aching throat.
Miss Walters stroked the dark hair and glanced with gentle meaning at the other girls.
“You may go now,” she said. “I’ll send Edina down to you. She will feel better presently.”
As the girls passed from the office to be met by a group of deeply moved and silenced students in the outer hall, Amanda Peabody was heard to mutter vindictively:
“Billie Bradley has all the pull in this place! She can get away with anything!”
It was the night of the big dance at Boxton Military Academy. Billie was there and Laura and Vi and, yes--oh, of course--Edina Tooker.
Billie was a dream--Teddy told her so--in a rose-colored chiffon evening dress. Scarcely less lovely were Laura in a dainty lavender chiffon dress and Vi in a clinging crêpe that brought out her pretty figure to perfection.
Edina in her gold-colored taffeta with gold slippers on her feet, her hair a shining, blue-black cap for her shapely head, was quite the rage with the young cadets at Boxton. She could not dance very well, but she was learning. In truth, there appeared to be no dearth of dancing instructors, prominent among these being the good-looking Paul Martinson.
Billie and her chums discussed these--and other things--during a temporary lull in the festivities. Teddy and Chet and Ferd Stowing had gone to fetch ice-cream and some of those “ducky little almond-flavored cakes.”
“Well,” said Laura as she patted a soft bow of her chiffon frock into place, “I can only remark what I believe a gentleman called Shakespeare has already remarked before me, ‘All’s well that ends well!’”