there's always some good to be found in everybody."

"Maybe," said Billie skeptically, "but hers is so small you would need a microscope to see it. There's the janitor now, just going out. If we run we can catch him."

And run they did, presenting themselves a minute later, rather red in the face and out of breath, before a very much amused janitor.

"Hello," he cried, his twinkling eyes under their shaggy brows lighting with pleasure as he looked at the girls. "Are you young ladies tryin' to catch a train, or what?"

"Oh, no, no," cried Violet eagerly. "We were just trying to catch you,
Mr. Heegan."

"Oh-ho! An' it's mighty flattered I am," said Mr. Heegan, his Irish brogue coming to the fore. "An' what, if I might be askin' you—"

"It's a book we left here," Billie broke in quickly. "Laura wants to know if you will let us in long enough to get it."

"Sure, an' I will that," Mr. Heegan assured them, leading the way into the school yard and pulling out his bunch of keys. "It must be a verra important book," he added, smiling at them as he fitted the key in the lock, "to be bringing you back to school after school's out."

"It was a gift from Father," Laura explained. "And I wouldn't lose it for anything."

"All right, there you go," said the good-natured janitor, swinging the door wide for them. "I'm goin' home, but I'll be comin' back in a few minutes to lock up. You'd best not be stayin' here then," he added, with a twinkling backward glance at them, "or it will be locked up for the night you'll be."

"We won't be more than a minute," Violet assured him, and jubilantly the girls ran through the empty, echoing hall and stopped before a door at the farther end.

"It seems so horribly quiet," said Violet, looking around at them with her hands on the door knob. "It makes you feel like a thief."

"Must be your guilty conscience," said Laura wickedly. "Come on, Vi; we've got to hurry if we don't want to be 'locked in for the night.'"

"Are you sure you left the book here, Laura?" asked Billie, as Violet opened the door and they crowded in. "It would be too bad if it were gone—"

But a cry from Laura interrupted her.

"There it is," she said, running to a desk at the farther end of the room and picking up from an inner corner a prettily bound book. "Just the very place I left it, too. My, but I'm glad to get it back again."

"What do you think you're doing, Billie Bradley?" inquired Laura a minute later, for Billie had seated herself at the teacher's desk and was looking as severe as she knew how.

"Take your seats," she now commanded, rapping vigorously on the desk and fixing them with her best school-teacher stare. "Violet Farrington, go to the board—"

But she got no further, for with an indignant cry the girls had rushed on her. Dropping both her air of command and her dignity, Billie scurried wildly around the room, keeping the desks between her and her pursuers.

"You can't catch me! You can't catch me!" she taunted them, as she dodged nimbly in and out among the desks. "I could keep this up all day, I could—"

"Oh, you could, could you?" cried Laura, and, making a desperate lunge, she almost had her hand on Billie's dress. "We'll see about that. Billie! what are you doing?"

For Billie had suddenly doubled on her tracks, rushed to the back of the room, put her foot upon a steam radiator pipe and was trying to clamber to the top of a bookcase.

It was a tall bookcase, and on the top of it stood a marble statue.

"Billie, look out!" screamed Violet as the bookcase shook and the statue seemed about to topple over by reason of Billie's wild scrambling.

"You won't catch me this time," Billie was defying them, when—the awful thing happened!

The marble statue toppled once more, trembled as though it were not quite sure whether to fall or stay where it was, then came tumbling to the floor with a crash.

The girls cried out, and then stood dumbly looking at the pieces.

CHAPTER II

THAT HUNDRED DOLLARS

Billie Bradley clambered down from her perch in awed silence.

"Girls," she said, her voice very low and solemn, "that 'Girl Reading a
Book' statue was worth a hundred dollars."

The girls started, and Laura cried out:

"How do you know it cost that much?"

"I heard Miss Beggs say so," Billie replied dully. "Now I certainly have done it. Girls, what shall I do?"

"It—it couldn't be put together again, could it?" suggested Violet weakly, leaning down to examine the pieces.

"Of course it couldn't," sniffed Laura, adding suddenly: "I suppose we could run away and nobody would know the dif—"

"Look," cried Billie, excitedly pointing to one of the windows.

Following the direction of her glance the girls were just in time to see the freckled face and mean little eyes of Amanda Peabody disappear from the window.

"Oh, that sneak!" cried Laura in a rage, rushing across to the window while the other girls followed close at her heels. "I wish I were a boy and she were another one. I'd just show her!"

"Well, now she will tell and we couldn't run away even if we wanted to," said Billie, sinking down on a bench and looking at them wistfully. "Of course we wouldn't really have wanted to," she added, after a minute of uncomfortable silence. "Only it makes me mad to have to do the right thing. Oh, I don't see why somebody doesn't run that Amanda person out of town," she went on, doubling up her fists and looking as if it might have been just as well for that "Amanda person" that she was not there at the minute.

"Teddy says he calls her 'Nanny,'" said Violet, with a flash of humor, "because it 'gets her goat.'"

"Sounds just like Ted," said Billie, with a smile. Then her face sobered again as she realized the gravity of the situation.

"Of course I'll have to make it good," she said, going over to the pieces again and regarding them mournfully. "But how in the world am I ever going to get together a hundred dollars? It might just as well be a thousand as far as I'm concerned." The last was a wail.

"Won't your father give you the money?" asked Laura, for to Laura's father a hundred dollars was only a drop in the bucket.

But Billie only shook her head while her face became still more grave.

"He would if he could," she said, "but I heard him say only the other day that times are hard and everything is terribly expensive, and I know he is worried. Oh, girls, I'm in a terrible fix!"

"I know you are, honey," said Violet, coming over and putting a comforting arm about her. "But there must be some way that we can fix things all right."

"I'd like to know how," grumbled Laura, who had chosen to take the gloomy view. "We might," she added generously, after a moment's thought, "say that I broke it—"

"Laura—dear!" cried Billie, not quite sure whether to be offended or grateful for the generous suggestion. "It's wonderful of you, of course, but you know I couldn't do that."

"And there's Amanda Peabody," added Violet. "She wouldn't let us get away with anything like that."

At which Laura nodded again, still more gloomily.

"Well," cried Billie, straightening up