thought you were never coming. Say, you make all the other girls look like nothing at all.” He was supposed to be talking to them all, but he was looking straight at Billie.

   But although the other girls noticed it, Billie did not. She was looking beyond Paul to where three boys, Teddy in the lead, were bearing down upon them.

   After that the boys soon made their guests feel as if they had never been nervous in their lives, and they entered into the fun with all their hearts.

   The parade of cadets was the most wonderful part of it all, of course, and the girls stood through it, their hearts beating wildly, a delicious wave of patriotism thrilling to their finger tips. And when it was over the girls looked at Teddy and Chet and Ferd and Paul with a new respect that the boys liked but did not understand at all.

   Several times during the afternoon they came across Eliza and Amanda and their escorts—who did not look like bad boys at all. But only once did the girls try to shove to the front.

   It was when Teddy and Paul had taken Billie and Connie over to the ice cream booth for refreshments, the other boys and girls having wandered off somewhere by themselves.

   Billie was standing up near the counter when Eliza Dilks deliberately elbowed her way in ahead of her.

   Billie began to feel herself getting angry, but before she could say anything, Teddy spoke over her shoulder.

   “Please serve us next,” he said to the pleasant-faced matron who had charge of this part of the refreshments. “Some of these others just came in and belong at the end of the line.”

   “Yes, I noticed you were here first,” the woman answered, and handed Billie her ice cream over Eliza’s head while Eliza, with a glance at Billie that should have killed her on the spot, turned sullenly and walked away.

   “Teddy, you’re a wonder,” murmured Billie under her breath. “I couldn’t have done it like that myself.”

   After this encounter Billie and her party wandered over to the dancing pavilion on the outside of which they met Laura and Vi and their escorts for the afternoon.

   “Isn’t this the dandiest band in the world?” sighed Billie in supreme content. “Such music would make—would make even Amanda 

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