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Title: Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners

Author: Janet D. Wheeler

Release Date: November 11, 2003 [EBook #10048] [Date last updated: January 8, 2005]

Language: English

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BILLIE BRADLEY AND HER INHERITANCE

OR

THE QUEER HOMESTEAD AT CHERRY CORNERS

BY JANET D. WHEELER

1920

BILLIE BRADLEY AND HER INHERITANCE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. AN ACCIDENT.

II. THAT HUNDRED DOLLARS.

III. CHET HELPS.

IV. THE LAST HOPE.

V. WORSE AND WORSE.

VI. DEBBIE DESERTS.

VII. A STRANGE BURGLAR.

VIII. STARTLING DEVELOPMENTS.

IX. GHOSTS AND THINGS.

X. OLD FURNITURE.

XI. BILLIE WINS OUT.

XII. GREAT PLANS.

XIII. CHERRY CORNERS.

XIV. WEIRD TALES.

XV. A NOISE IN THE DARK.

XVI. SHADOWS AND MYSTERY.

XVII. ONLY A BAT.

XVIII. A FISH STORY.

XIX. IN THE DEAD OF THE NIGHT.

XX. THE MOTOR AGAIN.

XXI. BOTH AT ONCE.

XXII. A THRILLING DISCOVERY.

XXIII. THE WRECKED AEROPLANE.

XXIV. COINS AND POSTAGE STAMPS.

XXV. "LARGE FORTUNES."

BILLIE BRADLEY AND HER INHERITANCE

CHAPTER I

AN ACCIDENT

"Aren't you glad that we are only going back to school for a little while?" cried Billie Bradley, as she gave a little exultant skip. "Suppose it were fall and we were beginning high—"

"Billie, stop it," commanded Laura Jordon, turning a pair of very blue and very indignant eyes upon her chum. "I thought we were going to forget school for a little while."

"Well, we're not going back for anything I forgot," Billie was asserting when Violet Farrington, the third of the trio, interposed:

"If you two are going to quarrel on a day like this, I'm going home."

"Who said we were quarreling?" cried Billie, adding with a chuckle: "We're just having what Miss Beggs" (Miss Beggs being their English teacher) "would call an 'amiable discussion.'"

"Listen to the bright child!" cried Laura mockingly. "I don't see how you ever get that way, Billie."

"Neither do I," replied Billie, adding with a chuckle as they turned to stare at her: "Just natural talent, I guess."

The three chums—and three brighter, prettier girls it would be hard to find—were on their way to the grammar school which had just closed the week before. Laura had forgotten a book which she prized highly and was in hope that the janitor, a good-natured old fellow, would let her in long enough to get it. At the last minute she had asked the other girls to go with her.

The three chums had lived in North Bend, a town of less than twenty thousand people, practically all their lives. The girls loved it, for it was a pretty place. Still, being only forty miles by rail from New York City, they had been taken to the roaring metropolis once in a while as a treat, and it was only with great difficulty that their parents had succeeded in luring them home again.

Among other things North Bend boasted a jewelry factory, of which Raymond
Jordon, Laura's father, was the owner.

Billie's father was the prominent Martin Bradley, well known among real estate and insurance men, and it was from him that Billie, whose real name was Beatrice, had taken her brown eyes and brown hair and even that merry, irrepressible imp of mischief that made Billie Bradley the most popular, best-loved girl in all North Bend.

Her mother, Agnes Bradley, quiet, sincere and beautiful to look upon, kept just the check on her gay young daughter that the young girl needed.

Billie had a brother, Chetwood Bradley, commonly known as "Chet"—a boy as different from his sister as night is from day, yet, in his own more quiet way, extremely attractive.

Laura's brother, Theodore, known to his intimates as Teddy, was a handsome boy, as full of wild spirits as Billie herself. Teddy had entertained a lively admiration for Billie Bradley since he was seven and she was six. Teddy was tall for his fifteen years, and had already made a name for himself in the field of athletics.

The third of the chums was Violet Farrington, a daughter of Richard Farrington, a well-known lawyer of North Bend, and Grace Farrington, a sweet, motherly woman.

Nearly everybody loved Violet, 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