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Dorothy knew it was worse than useless to protest, but this was not the sort of thing she considered fun. "Did you have a pleasant time at Dalton?" she asked, hoping to get Tavia's attention. "I was so sorry I could not go up for a day." "You might be glad," replied Tavia. "Of all the stupid times I would have run away but for Johnnie. He took me fishing, and I wore overalls!
You would have been welcome to it, Tavia. I don't forget chewing-gum days in dear old Dalton." Tavia's brow was clouded. What an opportunity for her confession! Why did she so dread to tell Dorothy what her own five dollars had gone for? Nat said it would positively leak out some day. Yet he promised not to tell. "Do you want me to go with you to see Miss Brooks?" asked Dorothy suddenly.
There seemed to be some connection between Tavia's envelope and the business advertised on Miss Brooks' card. But whatever could she want of Tavia? Surely she could not imagine a young girl needing the services of an expert penman? "I saw your trouble in the store the other day," Miss Brooks ventured, "and was so sorry for you.
You know I told you all to be here, or not to expect to go blundering along the roads, disgracing the school. Now, Miss Tavia Travers, please step back." All the commotion ceased. Tavia the patriotic girl she who had been searching for flowers in all sorts of dangerous and lonely places not to march? "Teacher," spoke up Dorothy, her cheeks aflame and her voice quivering. "It was not Tavia's fault.
And Dorothy had always warned her against writing letters to strangers. Oh, if she had only taken that advice! If she had only been satisfied with that sacred five dollars, money so dearly saved by her good mother! How many things that mother might have bought for herself, for Johnnie, or for Tavia's father, Squire Travers, with that fresh, clean five-dollar bill!
The captain, explained the nurse, was suffering more from neglect than any specific ailment, and he had already responded remarkably to treatment. "Isn't it a queer holiday?" Dorothy asked herself once more in the train, getting back to The Cedars. "And now for Tavia's troubles." Nat met her at the station, all smiles, but otherwise provokingly uncommunicative.
"Oh, please, Tavia, do listen! If you go, what will you say? What will you do?" "I don't know." "Tavia!" pleaded Dorothy, a note of distress in her voice. The two girls looked into each other's eyes. Dorothy's were brimful, but Tavia's were too "frozen" for tears. "Tavia, dear," whispered Dorothy. Tavia's arm stole about Dorothy's neck. She touched the flushed cheek with her dry lips.
Both girls looked much benefited by their visit, and even Tavia's short hair and unnatural red cheeks did not detract from the noticeable improvement. Dorothy's face had rounded some too, and the Lake air had given a ruddiness to her naturally delicate tinting, that was most becoming to her as a summer girl.
But this time Dorothy disappointed her she was too well pleased to get out of "the scrape," and had no intention of checking Tavia's suddenly-freed spirits. "Now for steam engines," she declared, "and if anything else happens to prevent us from buying our Christmas gifts " "We will make trouble ourselves," finished Tavia, and then they darted off in the direction of the toy department.
"We have got to start out and trace her," Jack Markin told Ned and Nat. "It is inconceivable where she could have gone to." "We certainly shall start out at once," declared Nat, who was always Tavia's champion, to say nothing of his being her special friend and admirer. "I have known her to do risky things before, but this is the utmost." "I never saw such a girl," growled Ned.
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