CHAPTER X
LAKE MOLATA
How the girls did enjoy the rest of that afternoon! Connie and Roseshowed them the classrooms and lecture rooms, told them little storiesabout the different teachers and recounted funny incidents of schoollife that made the girls bubble with laughter.
All the rooms were high-ceilinged, many-windowed and cheerful, but itwas the lecture hall and gymnasium that the girls thought the mostattractive of all.
The lecture room was on the third floor and was arranged in the shape ofa Roman circus, the seats in tiers all around the room with the lectureplatform in the center.
"My, I won't even mind being lectured to in a room like this," said Vi,in an awed little voice. "Do you have many lectures?"
"Too many," drawled Rose, sinking down in one of the seats and spreadingout her ruffled dress carefully. The girls had been too excited tonotice the dress before, but now they saw it was much more elaboratethan any they had brought with them, except one or two apiece for partywear.
"I wonder if all the girls dress like that for every day," thoughtBillie in a sort of panic, looking down at the pretty little brown clothdress she had thought so wonderful at home. She wondered if Vi and Laurafelt the same way.
A little later they wandered downstairs to the gymnasium, and then allthought of clothes was put in the background.
Around the gymnasium were all sorts of swinging ladders and standingladders. There were punching bags and medicine balls; in fact,everything calculated to make strong healthy women of the girls who cameto Three Towers Hall.
There was a swimming pool, also, and over this the girls went intoraptures. They had had scarcely any opportunity to learn to swim inNorth Bend, and although on their visits to New York they had neverfailed--that is, in the summer time--to take a dip, or several of them,in the Atlantic Ocean, they had never learned to swim more than a fewstrokes at a time.
"A swimming pool!" cried Billie. "I suppose we might have known we wouldhave one here. Now we can really learn to swim. I wonder," and sointerested had she been with her own affairs that this was the firsttime she had even given the boys a thought, "if Chet and Teddy and Ferdhave a swimming pool at Boxton Academy."
"Boxton Academy?" Rose took her up quickly, suddenly looking interested."Do you know any one who goes there?"
"I should say we do," put in Laura proudly. "Billie's----"
"Billie?" Connie interrupted, looking puzzled.
"I'm 'Billie,'" Billie explained, with a laugh. "They call me 'Billie'for short."
"Never mind about that," Rose put in impatiently. "What were you sayingabout the boys?"
The girls looked at pretty, black-haired, pink-cheeked Rose, and Billierealized suddenly why it was she had not altogether liked the girl.
"She'll be friendly to almost any girl if she happens to like herbrother," she thought, and instinctively she glanced at Laura. Thelatter must have had almost the same thought, for she gave Billie ameaning glance.
"You said they were at Boxton Academy," Rose insisted.
"Tell us about them," said Connie. She was interested, but in anentirely different sort of way.
"Well, there's Billie's brother and mine and a chum of theirs, FerdStowing. They came with us as far as Molata. Then they left us for theAcademy and we came on here. And we were having such a good time wenever thought about them," she finished penitently.
The girls were eager to look about the grounds of Three Towers afterthat, but Rose would not let them go till she had found out all aboutthe boys and their "life history," as Billie resentfully said later.After that the girls noticed that she was even more friendly than shehad been before.
"Oh, well," said Billie to herself, feeling strangely comforted by thethought, "she won't have much of a chance to see the boys, anyway,because we can only leave the grounds on special permission and theywon't be able to get away from the Academy to come here very often. Isuppose I'm an awful cat," she finished ruefully, "but I'm not going tolet her meet any of our boys if I can help it."
A little later she forgot all about her irritation in the delight ofwalking about the beautifully kept grounds of Three Towers and examiningthe outside of the picturesque old building itself.
The latter was even more beautiful than they had thought in their firstglimpse of it, with its rugged, ivy-grown walls and itsthree-battlemented towers rising above the trees.
"It looks almost like an old castle," cried Billie. "The kind you readabout in 'The Days of Chivalry.' All it needs is a----"
"Moat," finished Laura excitedly. "I was just thinking that, Billie."
"Yes, a moat would make it just perfect," sighed Violet, adding, with alaugh: "Anyway, even if we haven't the moat, we have a lake."
"Yes, let's go down and look at it," proposed Connie. "We've hadwonderful times on it all summer."
"Doing what?" asked Laura eagerly. "Do they let you row on it--all byyourselves?"
"I should say not," answered Rose, with a little toss of her head. "Youhave to learn to swim in the pool first so that if you upset your boatyou won't get drowned. It's their great boast that no girl has ever beendrowned at Three Towers."
"Well, we don't want to start anything," said Billie, with a littlegrimace, and the girls laughed.
"Then," Rose went on, "after you learn to swim you have to take aninstructor out in the rowboat or canoe with you until she thinks youknow how to handle it like an expert."
"What do you mean by an instructor?" asked Vi. "One of the teachers?"
"Sometimes it's a teacher," Connie spoke up. "But as a rule it's one ofthe older girls in the first grade who teaches the younger ones. MissWalters said," and her fair face flushed with pleasure, "that perhapsnext semester I shall be appointed as instructor."
"Oh, isn't that great?" cried Billie heartily, for she was beginning tolike Connie Danvers with all her heart. Then, too, she had noticed witha feeling of relief that Connie was not dressed like Rose Belser. Shehad on a pretty cloth dress very much like Billie's own. "And she didn'tseem crazy to know all about the boys," she added, with an added warmtharound her heart.
"I wonder," she said aloud, "how long it will take us girls to learn tobecome instructors."
"Well, I don't know about the rest of us," spoke up Nellie Bane; "but Iknow it won't take you very long, Billie. You were always the very firstto pick up anything."
As with most of the rest of Billie's friends, Nellie shared theconviction that Billie could do everything she tried to do just a littlebit better than any one else.
"I should say so," Laura added loyally. "There's nothing that you can'tdo, Billie."
Billie flushed with pleasure and Rose Belser looked at her with newinterest. For if Rose was not the most popular girl at Three Towers shecertainly thought she was and the praise of Billie's friends started herthinking. Could it be possible that here was a rival? But she shook herdark head impatiently. If this Billie Bradley thought she could startanything, why, she, Rose, would show her, that was all!
And all the time Billie, who had no thought of what was going on in theother girl's mind, was having the time of her life.
"Look at all the canoes!" she cried. "And they actually have racks forthem."
They had come down to a little dock that jutted out into the lake andhad been hidden from their view, or at least partly so, by the trees.Now, as they came out upon it, they stood astonished and delighted bythe sight that met their eyes.
There were half a dozen racks on the dock, each one constructed so as tocontain three canoes, one above the other, and every rack was full.
The canoes were each neatly covered with a tarpaulin, but the tarpaulin,drawn tight, revealed the long graceful outline of each beautiful littleboat, and the girls fairly ached to launch one of them upon the water.
"And there are rowboats, too," cried Vi, making another discovery. "Lotsand lots of them! Look! Here they are--tied to the dock."
Sure enough, there were fully a dozen gaily painted rowboats sway
inggently in the water on either side of the dock, sometimes straining alittle at the ropes that held them.
"But who would row when they could canoe?" cried Billie, for in Billiewas a passion for canoes which Chet had always declared must have comefrom her Indian ancestors. "I think rowboats are horribly clumsy."
"Hardly anybody really likes to row," Connie answered, "but we have todo it for the exercise, Miss Walters says there's no better exercise inthe world than rowing."
"Yes," said Billie, with a little laugh. "And no harder work, either."
"Do you do much swimming in the lake?" asked Nellie, gazing down at herreflection in the still water.
"Oh, we can," Rose answered. "But no one likes it very much. They'drather do their swimming in the swimming pool. There's a mud bottom tothe lake, and the water, though it looks mighty nice, isn't good todrink."
While they were speaking two girls whom the chums remembered having seenin the dining hall but did not know came down to the dock, and, afterwaving to Rose and Connie, went to a rack and started to take down oneof the canoes.
The girls watched rather wistfully while they slipped it from the rack,removed the cover, and slid it into the smooth water.
One girl with a skill born of experience jumped into the front seat ofthe canoe, lifted one of the paddles and waited while her companionsettled herself in the stern seat. Then they glided from the docksoftly, almost silently but for the dip of the paddles in the water, anddrifted out toward the middle of the lake.
"Oh, if we could only do that," sighed Billie, "I think I'd die happy."
"Those girls are instructors," Connie explained. "They are in the firstgrade and expect to graduate in the spring."
"It's funny, I suppose," said Billie, dreamily gazing up at the bloodred sun that was slowly sinking in the western sky, "but I'm reallysorry for them."
"Why?" they asked, surprised.
"Because," said Billie soberly, "they have to graduate and leave ThreeTowers!"