“Oh, yes it is,” said Billie earnestly.  “I would be very much obliged if you could get me her address.”

“Well, I can’t just now, because the lady that knows it isn’t at home.  But if you’ll leave me your address I’ll send it to you as soon’s I find it out.  Have you paper and pencil?”

The girls had not.

“Wait then, and I’ll get something on which to write your address.”

The landlady went inside, closing the door after her, and in spite of herself Billie uttered a little sigh of relief.  She felt very much like a reprieved criminal.

A moment later the woman reappeared with a pencil and paper and painstakingly wrote down the address Billie gave her.

“Thank you so much,” said the latter, as she turned away.  “You won’t forget to send it just the first minute you can, will you?”

The woman nodded and closed the door with a little bang.

“I wonder why she didn’t ask us in,” said Laura, as they ran down the steps.  “It was queer to keep us waiting outside.”

“Yes, it makes you feel like a book agent,” chuckled Billie.  “But oh, girls,” she added, “I didn’t know how much I dreaded facing Miss Beggs till I found out I didn’t have to.  I don’t mind writing to her nearly so much.”

With somewhat lighter steps and lighter hearts they turned toward home.  But Billie could not get the hundred-dollar statue which she had broken out of her mind.

“I feel,” said Laura, as they were turning the corner into her own street, “as if I ought to pay for that horrid old statue, Billie.”

“What do you mean?” queried Billie, while Violet regarded her with wide open eyes.

“Well, if it hadn’t been for me and my old book,” she explained, “we wouldn’t have gone back to school, and then you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into all that trouble.  I really do feel guilty,” she added earnestly.  “I wish you would at least let me help you pay for it, Billie.”

Billie put an arm about the girl and squeezed her lovingly.

“And I suppose you’re to blame for my climbing the bookcase, too,” she chided her fondly.  “No, Laura dear, it’s all my fault and you can’t make me put the blame on any one else.  But, oh!” she wailed, “how in the world am I ever going to raise that hundred dollars?”

CHAPTER III

CHET HELPS

The sun was flooding Billie Bradley’s room when she awoke the next morning, and she sat up in bed with the feeling that it must be very late.  She glanced at the little clock on the dresser and saw that its hands pointed to half past eight.

“Oh, I’ll be late to school,” was her first thought.  Then she checked herself and laughed.

“School!” she said, stretching her arms above her head with a delicious sense of freedom.  “As the old man said:  ‘They ain’t no sech animile.’  I guess I might just as well get up, though, for I feel as if I were starving to death.”