They had no other chance to talk, for in a minute they were surrounded by about a dozen of their classmates who all began scolding them at once about running away and demanded to know where they had been, so that plans for the Haddons were pushed temporarily into the background. Laughing and shouting to each other the girls took off their skates and scrambled up the long terraced hill that led to Three Towers. If the Hall and its surroundings were beautiful in the summer time, it was even more attractive in the winter. The ivy that covered the green-gray stone of the building was now frosted white with snow and ice, and this, catching the ruddy gleam of the afternoon sun, gave the Hall the appearance of a great, sparkling jewel. The three towers which gave the school its name made the place seem like some castle of old, and the surrounding trees and shrubbery, heavily coated with snow and icicles, gave to the old building just the air of mystery that it needed. The beauty of the familiar place struck Billie afresh, and she stopped short suddenly and gazed up at it with loving eyes. “Isn’t it lovely to have a place like this to come home to?” she said, as the girls looked at her inquiringly, “when you are tired and cold and——” “Hungry,” finished Laura, giving her a shove. “Giddap, Billie, you’re slowing down the works.” “Slang again,” sighed Vi, plaintively, as Billie obligingly “giddaped.” “If I should tell Miss Walters——” “You would never live to tell another tale,” prophesied Laura, amid a gale of laughter from the girls. “Two sneaks and tattletales are enough,” she added significantly, as she caught sight of Amanda Peabody and Eliza Dilks walking a little ahead of them. “I wonder where Connie and Nellie have kept themselves,” said Billie, as she with the other girls crowded through the wide door of the Hall. “They were up in the dorm, cramming for the exams when I saw them last,” said a tall girl at Billie’s elbow. She had evidently not been with the girls on the lake, for she wore no coat or hat and she carried a book under each arm as though she also had been studying. “Oh, hello, Carol!” greeted Billie, putting an arm about the tall girl and sweeping her toward the stairs. “So you’ve been grinding away as usual when you ought to have been out getting some good fresh air. My, you look as pale as a ghost.” For the tall girl, so studiously inclined, was none other than Caroline Brant, who had been such a good friend to Billie upon her arrival at Three Towers Hall the year before. The girls were all fond of Caroline, in spite of the undeniable fact that she was one of those usually despised students commonly known as “grinds.” “You know I don’t skate,” Caroline said in response to Billie’s accusation. “And I never could see why people prefer freezing their toes and noses to staying comfortably indoors.” “You’re an old lamb,” said Billie with a squeeze. “But there are lots of things that you never will see!”