aid
Chet reproachfully. "Captain Shelling didn't give us the whole day off,
you know."

"You deserve it just the same," said Connie Danvers. "He'll probably
give you a week off and a medal when he learns how you caught the
thief."

"But we couldn't have caught him if you girls hadn't come along,"
protested Teddy modestly. "If we get a holiday we'll see that you get
one, too."

"We're taking ours now," laughed Billie. "Good-bye, boys; and thanks
awfully for sending the telegram."

Teddy and Chet stood watching the girls as they trudged through the
clinging snow, and when they turned away their faces were unusually
sober.

"That's a plucky thing to do," said Teddy admiringly. "But I bet they
would never have had the nerve to do it if Billie hadn't set them up to
it."

"Billie's some class, isn't she?" Chet took him up eagerly. "Just look
how she jumped in front of the Codfish. She might have been shot, but
she never even thought of it. Say," he added, his chest swelling visibly
with pride, "I've always thought I'd like a brother; but Billie's as
good as a brother, any day."

"She's a sight better," Teddy contradicted fervently.

Tired but hopeful, the girls trudged the remaining distance to town and
started up the main street toward the one big hotel in Molata. They
strung down the street in what seemed an endless line, and people
passing stared wonderingly and turned around for another look when the
girls had passed them.

People gathered at the windows and in the door-ways to look at the
strange procession, but the girls were too tired and hungry to notice
them.

When they filed into the big summer hotel lobby, how the clerk at the
desk and the few men gathered about did stare! A hundred girls, all
pretty and daintily dressed, but seeming, by their suitcases and their
clothes which were powdered thick with clinging wet snow, to have walked
a good distance, were sure to create a sensation.

The girls hung back, realizing for the first time how they must appear
to strangers and not quite certain just what to do next. But, as usual,
Billie took the lead.

She went toward the clerk with an uncertain, apologetic little smile
that would have softened a much harder heart than his and said that she
would like to engage rooms for herself and her friends.

Be it said to the credit of the clerk, who was rather a nice looking boy
with sand colored hair and eyes to match, that he did not even smile.

Soberly he