Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners

Excerpt

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....