Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance; Or, The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners Read online

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  BILLIE BRADLEY AND HER INHERITANCE

  OR

  THE QUEER HOMESTEAD AT CHERRY CORNERS

  BY JANET D. WHEELER

  1920

  BILLIE BRADLEY AND HER INHERITANCE

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I. AN ACCIDENT.

  II. THAT HUNDRED DOLLARS.

  III. CHET HELPS.

  IV. THE LAST HOPE.

  V. WORSE AND WORSE.

  VI. DEBBIE DESERTS.

  VII. A STRANGE BURGLAR.

  VIII. STARTLING DEVELOPMENTS.

  IX. GHOSTS AND THINGS.

  X. OLD FURNITURE.

  XI. BILLIE WINS OUT.

  XII. GREAT PLANS.

  XIII. CHERRY CORNERS.

  XIV. WEIRD TALES.

  XV. A NOISE IN THE DARK.

  XVI. SHADOWS AND MYSTERY.

  XVII. ONLY A BAT.

  XVIII. A FISH STORY.

  XIX. IN THE DEAD OF THE NIGHT.

  XX. THE MOTOR AGAIN.

  XXI. BOTH AT ONCE.

  XXII. A THRILLING DISCOVERY.

  XXIII. THE WRECKED AEROPLANE.

  XXIV. COINS AND POSTAGE STAMPS.

  XXV. "LARGE FORTUNES."

  BILLIE BRADLEY AND HER INHERITANCE

  CHAPTER I

  AN ACCIDENT

  "Aren't you glad that we are only going back to school for a littlewhile?" cried Billie Bradley, as she gave a little exultant skip."Suppose it were fall and we were beginning high--"

  "Billie, stop it," commanded Laura Jordon, turning a pair of very blueand very indignant eyes upon her chum. "I thought we were going to forgetschool for a little while."

  "Well, we're not going back for anything I forgot," Billie was assertingwhen Violet Farrington, the third of the trio, interposed:

  "If you two are going to quarrel on a day like this, I'm going home."

  "Who said we were quarreling?" cried Billie, adding with a chuckle:"We're just having what Miss Beggs" (Miss Beggs being their Englishteacher) "would call an 'amiable discussion.'"

  "Listen to the bright child!" cried Laura mockingly. "I don't see howyou ever get that way, Billie."

  "Neither do I," replied Billie, adding with a chuckle as they turned tostare at her: "Just natural talent, I guess."

  The three chums--and three brighter, prettier girls it would be hard tofind--were on their way to the grammar school which had just closed theweek before. Laura had forgotten a book which she prized highly and wasin hope that the janitor, a good-natured old fellow, would let her inlong enough to get it. At the last minute she had asked the other girlsto go with her.

  The three chums had lived in North Bend, a town of less than twentythousand people, practically all their lives. The girls loved it, for itwas a pretty place. Still, being only forty miles by rail from New YorkCity, they had been taken to the roaring metropolis once in a while as atreat, and it was only with great difficulty that their parents hadsucceeded in luring them home again.

  Among other things North Bend boasted a jewelry factory, of which RaymondJordon, Laura's father, was the owner.

  Billie's father was the prominent Martin Bradley, well known among realestate and insurance men, and it was from him that Billie, whose realname was Beatrice, had taken her brown eyes and brown hair and even thatmerry, irrepressible imp of mischief that made Billie Bradley the mostpopular, best-loved girl in all North Bend.

  Her mother, Agnes Bradley, quiet, sincere and beautiful to look upon,kept just the check on her gay young daughter that the young girl needed.

  Billie had a brother, Chetwood Bradley, commonly known as "Chet"--a boyas different from his sister as night is from day, yet, in his own morequiet way, extremely attractive.

  Laura's brother, Theodore, known to his intimates as Teddy, was ahandsome boy, as full of wild spirits as Billie herself. Teddy hadentertained a lively admiration for Billie Bradley since he was seven andshe was six. Teddy was tall for his fifteen years, and had already made aname for himself in the field of athletics.

  The third of the chums was Violet Farrington, a daughter of RichardFarrington, a well-known lawyer of North Bend, and Grace Farrington, asweet, motherly woman.

  Nearly everybody loved Violet, who was tall and dark and sweet-tempered.She also acted as a sort of perpetual peace-maker between brown-eyedBillie and blue-eyed Laura.

  So now she was acting again on this glorious day in July when the roseswere out and the birds were singing and the sun was shining itsbrightest.

  "What shall we do if we can't get in?" suggested Billie, waving her handto Nellie Bane, another girl in her class, who passed on the oppositeside of the street.

  "I suppose we'd have to go home again," answered Laura, adding with alittle worried frown: "Oh, I do hope I can get the book. I wouldn't loseit for anything."

  "There goes Amanda Peabody," cried Violet suddenly, clutchingBillie's arm.

  "That makes no difference in my young life," Billie slangily assured her.

  "As long as she _goes_, it's all right," added Laura, glancing after thelanky figure of Amanda Peabody as the girl swung off in the otherdirection.

  Amanda Peabody was not popular with the girls. Nor was she with anybody,for that matter. As far as the girls knew, she had not one friend in thewhole school.

  Amanda was red-haired and freckled; and while these attributes alonecould not have accounted for her unpopularity, she added to them atendency to spy upon the other girls and then run and tell what she hadseen or heard.

  It was this last characteristic that no fair-minded girl would tolerateand so Amanda had lived in practical ostracism ever since she had come toNorth Bend two years before.

  "I don't think we ought to be too hard on her," said Violet, as theyturned the corner that brought the school into view. "She can't help hermean disposition, I suppose. And anyway, Miss Beggs says there's alwayssome good to be found in everybody."

  "Maybe," said Billie skeptically, "but hers is so small you would need amicroscope to see it. There's the janitor now, just going out. If we runwe can catch him."

  And run they did, presenting themselves a minute later, rather red in theface and out of breath, before a very much amused janitor.

  "Hello," he cried, his twinkling eyes under their shaggy brows lightingwith pleasure as he looked at the girls. "Are you young ladies tryin' tocatch a train, or what?"

  "Oh, no, no," cried Violet eagerly. "We were just trying to catch you,Mr. Heegan."

  "Oh-ho! An' it's mighty flattered I am," said Mr. Heegan, his Irishbrogue coming to the fore. "An' what, if I might be askin' you--"

  "It's a book we left here," Billie broke in quickly. "Laura wants to knowif you will let us in long enough to get it."

  "Sure, an' I will that," Mr. Heegan assured them, leading the way intothe school yard and pulling out his bunch of keys. "It must be a verraimportant book," he added, smiling at them as he fitted the key in thelock, "to be bringing you back to school after school's out."

  "It was a gift from Father," Laura explained. "And I wouldn't lose itfor anything."

  "All right, there you go," said the good-natured janitor, swinging thedoor wide for them. "I'm goin' home, but I'll be comin' back in a fewminutes to lock up. You'd best not be stayin' here then," he added, with
a twinkling backward glance at them, "or it will be locked up for thenight you'll be."

  "We won't be more than a minute," Violet assured him, and jubilantly thegirls ran through the empty, echoing hall and stopped before a door atthe farther end.

  "It seems so horribly quiet," said Violet, looking around at them withher hands on the door knob. "It makes you feel like a thief."

  "Must be your guilty conscience," said Laura wickedly. "Come on, Vi;we've got to hurry if we don't want to be 'locked in for the night.'"

  "Are you sure you left the book here, Laura?" asked Billie, asViolet opened the door and they crowded in. "It would be too bad ifit were gone--"

  But a cry from Laura interrupted her.

  "There it is," she said, running to a desk at the farther end of the roomand picking up from an inner corner a prettily bound book. "Just the veryplace I left it, too. My, but I'm glad to get it back again."

  "What do you think you're doing, Billie Bradley?" inquired Laura aminute later, for Billie had seated herself at the teacher's desk and waslooking as severe as she knew how.

  "Take your seats," she now commanded, rapping vigorously on the desk andfixing them with her best school-teacher stare. "Violet Farrington, go tothe board--"

  But she got no further, for with an indignant cry the girls had rushed onher. Dropping both her air of command and her dignity, Billie scurriedwildly around the room, keeping the desks between her and her pursuers.

  "You can't catch me! You can't catch me!" she taunted them, as shedodged 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 theroom, put her foot upon a steam radiator pipe and was trying to clamberto 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 statueseemed about to topple over by reason of Billie's wild scrambling.

  "You won't catch me this time," Billie was defying them, when--the awfulthing happened!

  The marble statue toppled once more, trembled as though it were not quitesure whether to fall or stay where it was, then came tumbling to thefloor with a crash.

  The girls cried out, and then stood dumbly looking at the pieces.