“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.’”