on to
believe that Hugo Billings would not want a lot of curious girls spying
about his quarters, and, being sorry for him and grateful to him for
helping them out of their fix, they absolutely refused to have anything
to do with the idea.

They were greeted with open arms on the night of their return. Miss
Walters, the much-beloved head of Three Towers Hall, said that she had
been just about to send out a searching party for them.

They were late for supper, but that only made their appetites better, and
as they were favorites of the cook they were given an extra share of
everything and ate ravenously, impatient of the questions flung at them
by the curious girls.

"Thank goodness the Dill Pickles aren't here," Laura said to Billie
between mouthfuls of pork chop. "Think of coming home with _our_
appetites to the kind of dinners they used to serve us."

"Laura! what a horrible thought," cried Billie, her eyes dancing as she
helped herself to two more biscuits. "That's treason."

For the "Dill Pickles" were two elderly spinsters who had been teachers
at Three Towers Hall when Billie and her chums had first arrived. Their
tartness and strictness and miserliness had made the life of the girls in
the school uncomfortable for some time.

And then had come the climax. Miss Walters, having been called away for a
week or two, Miss Ada Dill and Miss Cora Dill, disrespectfully dubbed by
the girls the twin "Dill Pickles," had things in their own hands and
proceeded to make the life of the girls unbearable. They had taken away
their liberty, and then had half starved them by cutting down on the
meals until finally the girls had rebelled.

With Billie in the lead, they had marched out of Three Towers Hall one
day, bag and baggage, to stay in a hotel in the town of Molata until Miss
Walters should get back. Miss Walters, coming home unexpectedly, had met
the girls in town, accompanied them back to Three Towers and, as one of
the girls slangily described it, "had given the Dill Pickles all that was
coming to them."

In other words, the Misses Dill had been discharged and the girls had
come off victorious. Now there were two new teachers in their place who
were as different from the Dill Pickles as night is from day. All the
girls loved them, especially a Miss Arbuckle who had succeeded Miss Cora
Dill in presiding over the dining hall.

So it was to this that Laura had referred when she said, "Thank goodness
the Dill Pickles