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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOROTHY DALE'S ENGAGEMENT ***





  Transcriber’s Note
  Italic text displayed as: _italic_




[Illustration: “NO, DADDY,” SHE SAID, “I—I THINK I—I AM IN LOVE.”

  _Dorothy Dale’s Engagement_      _Page 165_
]




  DOROTHY DALE’S
  ENGAGEMENT

  BY

  MARGARET PENROSE

  AUTHOR OF “DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY,” “DOROTHY
  DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL,” “DOROTHY DALE IN
  THE CITY,” “THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES,” ETC.

  ILLUSTRATED

  NEW YORK

  CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY




BOOKS BY MARGARET PENROSE

_12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price, per volume, 75 cents, postpaid_


THE DOROTHY DALE SERIES

  DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY
  DOROTHY DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL
  DOROTHY DALE’S GREAT SECRET
  DOROTHY DALE AND HER CHUMS
  DOROTHY DALE’S QUEER HOLIDAYS
  DOROTHY DALE’S CAMPING DAYS
  DOROTHY DALE’S SCHOOL RIVALS
  DOROTHY DALE IN THE CITY
  DOROTHY DALE’S PROMISE
  DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST
  DOROTHY DALE’S STRANGE DISCOVERY
  DOROTHY DALE’S ENGAGEMENT


THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES

  THE MOTOR GIRLS
  THE MOTOR GIRLS ON A TOUR
  THE MOTOR GIRLS AT LOOKOUT BEACH
  THE MOTOR GIRLS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND
  THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CEDAR LAKE
  THE MOTOR GIRLS ON THE COAST
  THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CRYSTAL BAY
  THE MOTOR GIRLS ON WATERS BLUE
  THE MOTOR GIRLS AT CAMP SURPRISE
  THE MOTOR GIRLS IN THE MOUNTAINS

 _Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York_


  COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
  CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

  DOROTHY DALE’S ENGAGEMENT




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

  I.      “ALONE IN A GREAT CITY”                                      1

  II.     G. K. TO THE RESCUE                                         17

  III.    TAVIA IN THE SHADE                                          26

  IV.     SOMETHING ABOUT “G. KNAPP”                                  32

  V.      DOROTHY IS DISTURBED                                        40

  VI.     SOMETHING OF A MYSTERY                                      47

  VII.    GARRY SEES A WALL AHEAD                                     57

  VIII.   AND STILL DOROTHY IS NOT HAPPY                              66

  IX.     THEY SEE GARRY’S BACK                                       72

  X.      “HEART DISEASE”                                             78

  XI.     A BOLD THING TO DO!                                         84

  XII.    UNCERTAINTIES                                               92

  XIII.   DOROTHY MAKES A DISCOVERY                                  101

  XIV.    TAVIA IS DETERMINED                                        109

  XV.     THE SLIDE ON SNAKE HILL                                    116

  XVI.    THE FLY IN THE AMBER                                       127

  XVII.   “DO YOU UNDERSTAND TAVIA?”                                 135

  XVIII.  CROSS PURPOSES                                             141

  XIX.    WEDDING BELLS IN PROSPECT                                  147

  XX.     A GIRL OF TO-DAY                                           154

  XXI.    THE BUD UNFOLDS                                            162

  XXII.   DOROTHY DECIDES                                            169

  XXIII.  NAT JUMPS AT A CONCLUSION                                  179

  XXIV.   THIN ICE                                                   188

  XXV.    GARRY BALKS                                                200

  XXVI.   SERIOUS THOUGHTS                                           207

  XXVII.  “IT’S ALL OFF!”                                            213

  XXVIII. THE CASTAWAYS                                              225

  XXIX.   SOMETHING AMAZING                                          235

  XXX.    SO IT WAS ALL SETTLED                                      243




DOROTHY DALE’S ENGAGEMENT




CHAPTER I

“ALONE IN A GREAT CITY”


“Now, Tavia!”

“Now, Dorothy!” mocked Octavia Travers, making a little face as she did
so; but then, Tavia Travers could afford to “make faces,” possessing as
she did such a naturally pretty one.

“We must decide immediately,” her chum, Dorothy Dale, said decidedly,
“whether to continue in the train under the river and so to the main
station, or to change for the Hudson tube. You know, we can walk from
the tube station at Twenty-third Street to the hotel Aunt Winnie always
patronizes.”

“With these heavy bags, Doro?”

“Only a block and a half, my dear Tavia. You are a strong, healthy
girl.”

“But I do so like to have people do things for me,” sighed Tavia,
clasping her hands. “And taxicabs are _so_ nice.”

“And expensive,” rejoined Dorothy.

“Of course. That is what helps to make them nice,” declared Tavia.
“Doro, I just love to throw away money!”

“You only think you do, my dear,” her chum said placidly. “Once you had
thrown some of your own money away—some of that your father sent you to
spend for your fall and winter outfit—you would sing a different tune.”

“I don’t believe I would—not if by throwing it away I really made a
splurge, Doro,” sighed Tavia. “I _love_ money.”

“You mean, you love what money enables us to have.”

“Yep,” returned the slangy Tavia. “And taxicab rides eat up money
horribly. We found that out, Doro, when we were in New York before,
that time—before we graduated from dear old Glenwood School.”

“But _this_ isn’t getting us anywhere. To return——”

“‘_Revenons à nos moutons!_’ Sure! I know,” gabbled Tavia. “Let us
return to our mutton. He, he! Have I forgotten my French?”

“I really think you have,” laughed Dorothy Dale. “Most of it. And
almost everything else you learned at dear old Glenwood, Tavia. But,
quick! Decide, my dear. How shall we enter New York City? We are
approaching the Manhattan Transfer.”

“Mercy! So quick?”

“Yes. Just like that.”

“I tell you,” whispered Tavia, suddenly becoming confidential, her
sparkling eyes darting a glance ahead. “Let’s leave it to that nice
man.”

“Who? What man do you mean, Tavia?” demanded Dorothy, her face at once
serious. “Do try to behave.”

“Am behaving,” declared Tavia, nodding. “But I’m a good sport. Let’s
leave it to him.”

“Whom do you mean?”

“You know. That nice, Western looking young man who opened the window
for us that time. He is sitting in that chair just yonder. Don’t you
see?” and she indicated a pair of broad shoulders in a gray coat, above
which was revealed a well-shaped head with a thatch of black hair.

“Do consider!” begged Dorothy, catching Tavia’s hand as though she
feared her chum was about to get up to speak to this stranger. “This is
a public car. We are observed.”

“Little silly!” said Tavia, smiling upon her chum tenderly. “You
don’t suppose I would do anything so crude—or rude—as to speak to the
gentleman? ‘Fie! fie! fie for shame! Turn your back and tell his name!’
And you don’t know it, you know you don’t, Doro.”

Dorothy broke into smiles again and shook her head; her own eyes, too,
dancing roguishly.

“I only know his initials,” she said.

“What?” gasped Tavia Travers in something more than mock horror.

“Yes. They are ‘G. K.’ I saw them on his bag. Couldn’t help it,”
explained Dorothy, now laughing outright. “But decide, dear! Shall we
change at Manhattan Transfer?”

“If _he_ does—there!” chuckled Tavia. “We’ll get out if the nice
Western cowboy person does. Oh! he’s a whole lot nicer looking than
Lance Petterby.”

“Dear me, Tavia! Haven’t you forgotten Lance yet?”

“Never!” vowed Tavia, tragically. “Not till the day of my death—and
then some, as Lance would himself say.”

“You are incorrigible,” sighed Dorothy. Then: “He’s going to get out,
Tavia!”

“Oh! oh! oh!” crowed her chum, under her breath. “You were looking.”

“Goodness me!” returned Dorothy, in some exasperation. “Who could miss
that hat?”

The young man in question had put on his broad-brimmed gray hat. He was
just the style of man that such a hat became.

The young man lifted down the heavy suitcase from the rack—the one on
which Dorothy had seen the big, black letters, “G. K.” He had a second
suitcase of the same description under his feet. He set both out into
the aisle, threw his folded light overcoat over his arm, and prepared
to make for the front door of the car as the train began to slow down.

“Come on, now!” cried Tavia, suddenly in a great hurry.

But Dorothy had to put on her coat, and to make sure that she looked
just right in the mirror beside her chair. All Tavia had to do was to
toss her summer fur about her neck and grab up her traveling bag.

“We’ll be left!” she cried. “The train doesn’t stop here long.”

“You run, then, and tell them to wait,” Dorothy said calmly.

They were, however, the last to leave the car—the last to leave the
train, in fact—at the elevated platform which gives a broad view of the
New Jersey meadows.

“My goodness me!” gasped Tavia, as the brakeman helped them to the
platform, and waved his hand for departure. “My goodness me! We’re
clear at this end of this awful platform, and the tube train stops—and
of course starts—at the far end. A mile to walk with these bags and not
a redcap in sight. Oh, yes! there’s one,” she added faintly.

“Redcap?” queried Dorothy. “Oh! you mean a porter.”

“Yes,” Tavia said. “Of course you would be slow. Everybody’s got a
porter but us.”

Dorothy laughed mellowly. “Who’s fault do you intimate it is?” she
asked. “We might have been the first out of the car.”

“_He’s_ got one,” whispered Tavia.

Oddly enough her chum did not ask “Who?” this time. She, too, was
looking at the back of the well-set-up young man whose initials seemed
to be G. K. He stood confronting an importunate porter, whose smiling
face was visible to the girls as he said:

“Why, Boss, yo’ can’t possibly kerry dem two big bags f’om dis end ob
de platfo’m to de odder.”

The porter held out both hands for the big suitcases carried by the
Western looking young man, who really appeared to be physically much
better able to carry his baggage than the negro.

“I don’t suppose two-bits has anything to do with your desire to tote
my bag?” suggested the white man, and the listening girls knew he must
be smiling broadly.

“Why, Boss, _yo’_ can’t earn two-bits carryin’ bags yere; but _I_ kin,”
and the negro chuckled delightedly as he gained possession of the bags.
“Come right along, Boss.”

As the porter set off, the young man turned and saw Dorothy Dale and
Tavia Travers behind him. Besides themselves, indeed, this end of the
long cement platform was clear. Other passengers from the in-bound
train had either gone forward or descended into the tunnel under the
tracks to reach the north-side platform. The only porter in sight was
the man who had taken G. K.’s bags.

The weight of the shiny black bags the girls carried was obvious.
Indeed, perhaps Tavia sagged perceptibly on that side—and
intentionally; and, of course, her hazel eyes said “Please!” just as
plain as eyes ever spoke before.

Off came the broad-brimmed hat just for an instant. Then he held out
both hands.

“Let me help you, ladies,” he said, with the pleasantest of smiles.
“Seeing that I have obtained the services of the only Jasper in sight,
you’d better let me play porter. Going to take this tube train, ladies?”

“Yes, indeed!” cried Tavia, twinkling with smiles at once, and first to
give him a bag.

Dorothy might have hesitated, but the young man was insistent and
quick. He seized both bags as a matter of course, and Dorothy Dale
could not pull hers away from him.

“You must let us pay your porter, then,” she said, in her quietly
pleasant way.

“Bless you! we won’t fight over that,” chuckled the young man.

He was agreeably talkative, with that wholesome, free, yet chivalrous
manner which the girls, especially the thoughtful Dorothy, had noticed
as particular attributes of the men they had met during their memorable
trip to the West, some months before.

She noticed, too, that his attentions to Tavia and herself were nicely
balanced. Of course, Tavia, as she always did, began to run on in her
light-hearted and irresponsible way; but though the young man listened
to her with a quiet smile, he spoke directly to Dorothy quite as often
as he did to the flyaway girl. He did not seek to take advantage of
Tavia’s exuberant good spirits as so many strangers might have done.

Tavia’s flirtatious ways were a sore trial to her more sober chum; but
this young man seemed to understand Tavia at once.

“Of course, you’re from the West?” Tavia finished one “rattlety-bang”
series of remarks with this direct question.

“Of course I am. Right from the desert—Desert City, in fact,” he said,
with a quiet smile.

“Oh!” gasped Tavia, turning her big eyes on her chum. “Did you hear
that, Doro? Desert City!”

For the girls, during their visit to the West had, as Tavia often
claimed in true Western slang, helped “put Desert City on the map.”

Dorothy, however, did not propose to let this conversation with a
strange man become at all personal. She ignored her chum’s observation
and, as the city-bound tube train came sliding in beside the platform,
she reached for her own bag and insisted upon taking it from the
Westerner’s hand.

“Thank you so much,” she said, with just the right degree of firmness
as well as of gratitude.

Perforce he had to give up the bag, and Tavia’s, too, for there was the
red-capped, smiling negro expectant of the “two-bits.”

“You are _so_ kind,” breathed Tavia, with one of her wonderful
“man-killing” glances at the considerate G. K., as Dorothy’s cousin,
Nat White, would have termed her expression of countenance.

G. K. was polite and not brusk; but he was not flirtatious. Dorothy
entered the Hudson tube train with a feeling of considerable
satisfaction. G. K. did not even enter the car by the same door as
themselves nor did he take the empty seat opposite the girls, as he
might have done.

“There! he is one young man who will not flirt with you, Tavia,” she
said, admonishingly.

“Pooh! I didn’t half try,” declared her chum, lightly.

“My dear! you would be tempted, I believe, to flirt with a blind man!”

“Oh, Doro! Never!” Then she dimpled suddenly, glancing out of the
window as the train swept on. “_There’s_ a man I didn’t try to flirt
with.”

“Where?” laughed Dorothy.

“Outside there beside the tracks,” for they had not yet reached the
Summit Avenue Station, and it is beyond that spot that the trains dive
into the tunnel.

“We passed him too quickly then,” said Dorothy. “Lucky man!”

The next moment—or so it seemed—Tavia began on another tack:

“To think! In fifteen minutes, Doro my dear, we shall be ‘Alone in a
Great City.’”

“How alone?” drawled her friend. “Do you suppose New York has suddenly
been depopulated?”

“But we shall be alone, Doro. What more lonesome than a crowd in which
you know nobody?”

“How very thoughtful you have become of a sudden. I hope you will keep
your hand on your purse, dear. There will be some people left in the
great city—and perhaps one may be a pickpocket.”

The electric lights were flashed on, and the train soon dived into the
great tunnel, “like a rabbit into his burrow,” Tavia said. They had
to disembark at Grove Street to change for an uptown train. The tall
young Westerner did likewise, but he did not accost them.

The Sixth Avenue train soon whisked the girls to their destination, and
they got out at Twenty-third Street. As they climbed the steps to the
street level, Tavia suddenly uttered a surprised cry.

“Look, will you, Doro?” she said. “Right ahead!”

“G. K.!” exclaimed her friend, for there was the young man mounting the
stairs, lugging his two heavy suitcases.

“Suppose he goes to the very same hotel?” giggled Tavia.

“Well—maybe that will be nice,” Dorothy said composedly. “He looks nice
enough for us to get acquainted with him—in some perfectly proper way,
of course.”

“Whew, Doro!” breathed Tavia, her eyes opening wide again. “You’re
coming on, my dear.”

“I am speaking sensibly. If he is a nice young man and perfectly
respectable, why shouldn’t he find some means of meeting us—if he wants
to—and we are all at the same hotel?”

“But——”

“I don’t believe in flirting,” said Dorothy Dale, calmly, yet with a
twinkle in her eyes. “But I certainly would not fly in the face of
Providence—as Miss Higley, our old teacher at Glenwood, would say—and
refuse to meet G. K. He looks like a really nice young man.”

“Doro!” gasped Tavia. “You amaze me! I shall next expect to see the
heavens fall!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said her friend, as they reached the exit of the
tube station and stepped out upon the sidewalk.

There was the Westerner already dickering with a boy to carry his bags.

“_He_ likes to throw money away, too!” whispered Tavia. “I suppose we
must be economical and carry ours.”

“As there seems to be no other boy in sight—yes,” laughed her friend.

“That young man gets the best of us every time,” complained Tavia under
her breath.

“He is typically Western,” said Dorothy. “He is prompt.”

But then, the boy starting off with the heavy bags in a little
box-wagon he drew, the young man whose initials were G. K., turned with
a smile to the two girls.

“Ladies,” he said, lifting his hat again, “at the risk of being
considered impertinent, I wish to ask you if you are going my way? If
so I will help you with your bags, having again cinched what seems to
be the only baggage transportation facilities at this station.”

For once Tavia was really speechless. It was Dorothy who quite coolly
asked the young man:

“Which is your direction?”

“To the Fanuel,” he said.

“That is where we are going,” Dorothy admitted, giving him her bag
again without question.

“Oh!” exclaimed Tavia, “getting into the picture with a bounce,” as she
would have expressed it. “Aren’t you the _handiest_ young man!”

“Thank you,” he replied, laughing. “That is a reputation to make one
proud. I never was in this man’s town before, but I was recommended to
the Fanuel by my boss.”

“Oh!” Tavia hastened to take the lead in the conversation. “We’ve been
here before—Doro and I. And we always stop at the Fanuel.”

“Now, I look on that as a streak of pure luck,” he returned. He looked
at Dorothy, however, not at Tavia.

The boy with the wagon went on ahead and the three voyagers followed,
laughing and chatting, G. K. swinging the girls’ bags as though they
were light instead of heavy.

“I want awfully to know his name,” whispered Tavia, when they came to
the hotel entrance and the young man handed over their bags again and
went to the curb to get his own suitcases from the boy.

“Let’s,” added Tavia, “go to the clerk’s desk and ask for the rooms
your Aunt Winnie wrote about. Then I’ll get a chance to see what he
writes on the book.”

“Nonsense, Tavia!” exclaimed Dorothy. “We’ll do nothing of the kind.
We must go to the ladies’ parlor and send a boy to the clerk, or the
manager, with our cards. This is a family hotel, I know; but the lobby
and the office are most likely full of men at this time in the day.”

“Oh, dear! Come on, then, Miss Particular,” groaned Tavia. “And we
didn’t even bid him good-bye at parting.”

“What did you want to do?” laughed Dorothy. “Weep on his shoulder and
give him some trinket, for instance, as a souvenir?”

“Dorothy Dale!” exclaimed her friend. “I believe you have something up
your sleeve. You seem just _sure_ of seeing this nice cowboy person
again.”

“All men from the West do not punch cattle for a living. And it would
not be the strangest thing in the world if we should meet G. K. again,
as he is stopping at this hotel.”

However, the girls saw nothing more of the smiling and agreeable
Westerner that day. Dorothy Dale’s aunt had secured by mail two rooms
and a bath for her niece and Tavia. The girls only appeared at dinner,
and retired early. Even Tavia’s bright eyes could not spy out G. K.
while they were at dinner.

Besides, the girls had many other things to think about, and Tavia’s
mind could not linger entirely upon even as nice a young man as G. K.
appeared to be.

This was their first visit to New York alone, as the more lively girl
indicated. Aunt Winnie White had sprained her ankle and could not come
to the city for the usual fall shopping. Dorothy was, for the first
time, to choose her own fall and winter outfit. Tavia had come on from
Dalton, with the money her father had been able to give her for a
similar purpose, and the friends were to shop together.

They left the hotel early the next morning and arrived at the first
huge department store on their list almost as soon as the store was
opened, at nine o’clock.

An hour later they were in the silk department, pricing goods and “just
looking” as Tavia said. In her usual thoughtless and incautious way,
Tavia dropped her handbag upon the counter while she used both hands to
examine a particular piece of goods, calling Dorothy’s attention to it,
too.

“No, dear; I do not think it is good enough, either for the money or
for your purpose,” Dorothy said. “The color _is_ lovely; but don’t be
guided wholly by that.”

“No. I suppose you are right,” sighed Tavia.

She shook her head at the clerk and prepared to follow her friend,
who had already left the counter. Hastily picking up what she supposed
to be her bag, Tavia ran two or three steps to catch up with Dorothy.
As she did so a feminine shriek behind her startled everybody within
hearing.

“That girl—she’s got my bag! Stop her!”

“Oh! what is it?” gasped Dorothy, turning.

“Somebody’s stolen something,” stammered Tavia, turning around too.

Then she looked at the bag in her hand. Instead of her own seal-leather
one, it was a much more expensive bag, gold mounted and plethoric.

“There she is! She’s got it in her hand!”

A woman dressed in the most extreme fashion and most expensively,
darted down the aisle upon the two girls. She pointed a quivering,
accusing finger directly at poor Tavia.




CHAPTER II

G. K. TO THE RESCUE


Dorothy Dale and her friend Tavia Travers had often experienced very
serious adventures, but the shock of this incident perhaps was as great
and as thrilling as anything that had heretofore happened to them.

The series of eleven previous stories about Dorothy, Tavia, and their
friends began with “Dorothy Dale: A Girl of To-day,” some years before
the date of this present narrative. At that time Dorothy was living
with her father, Major Frank Dale, a Civil War veteran, who owned and
edited the _Bugle_, a newspaper published in Dalton, a small town in
New York State.

Then Major Dale’s livelihood and that of the family, consisting of
Dorothy and her small brothers, Joe and Roger, depended upon the
success of the _Bugle_. Taken seriously ill in the midst of a lively
campaign for temperance and for a general reform government in Dalton,
it looked as though the major would lose his paper and the better
element in the town lose their fight for prohibition; but Dorothy Dale,
confident that she could do it, got out the _Bugle_ and did much,
young girl though she was, to save the day. In this she was helped by
Tavia Travers, a girl brought up entirely differently from Dorothy, and
who possessed exactly the opposite characteristics to serve as a foil
for Dorothy’s own good sense and practical nature.

Major Dale was unexpectedly blessed with a considerable legacy which
enabled him to sell the _Bugle_ and take his children to The Cedars,
at North Birchland, to live with his widowed sister and her two boys,
Ned and Nat White, who were both older than their cousin Dorothy.
In “Dorothy Dale at Glenwood School,” is related these changes for
the better in the fortunes of the Dale family, and as well there is
narrated the beginning of a series of adventures at school and during
vacation times, in which Dorothy and Tavia are the central characters.

Subsequent books are entitled respectively: “Dorothy Dale’s Great
Secret,” “Dorothy Dale and Her Chums,” “Dorothy Dale’s Queer Holidays,”
“Dorothy Dale’s Camping Days,” “Dorothy Dale’s School Rivals,” “Dorothy
Dale in the City,” and “Dorothy Dale’s Promise,” in which story the two
friends graduate from Glenwood and return to their homes feeling—and
looking, of course—like real, grown-up young ladies. Nevertheless, they
are not then through with adventures, surprising happenings, and much
fun.

About the time the girls graduated from school an old friend of Major
Dale, Colonel Hardin, passed away, leaving his large estate in the West
partly to the major and partly to be administered for the local public
good. Cattle raising was not so generally followed as formerly in that
section and dry farming was being tried.

Colonel Hardin had foreseen that nothing but a system of irrigation
would save the poor farmers from ruin and on his land was the fountain
of supply that should water the whole territory about Desert City and
make it “blossom as the rose.” There were mining interests, however,
selfishly determined to obtain the water rights on the Hardin Estate
and that by hook or by crook.

Major Dale’s health was not at this time good enough for him to look
into these matters actively or to administer his dead friend’s estate.
Therefore, it is told in “Dorothy Dale in the West,” how Aunt Winnie
White, Dorothy’s two cousins, Ned and Nat, and herself with Tavia, go
far from North Birchland and mingle with the miners, and other Western
characters to be found on and about the Hardin property, including a
cowboy named Lance Petterby, who shows unmistakable signs of being
devoted to Tavia. Indeed, after the party return to the East, Lance
writes to Tavia and the latter’s apparent predilection for the cowboy
somewhat troubles Dorothy.

However, after their return to the East the chums went for a long visit
to the home of a school friend, Jennie Hapgood, in Pennsylvania; and
there Tavia seemed to have secured other—and less dangerous—interests.
In “Dorothy Dale’s Strange Discovery,” the narrative immediately
preceding this present tale, Dorothy displays her characteristic
kindliness and acute reasoning powers in solving a problem that brings
to Jennie Hapgood’s father the very best of good fortune.

Naturally, the Hapgoods are devoted to Dorothy. Besides, Ned and Nat,
her cousins, have visited Sunnyside and are vastly interested in
Jennie. The girl chums now in New York City on this shopping tour,
expect on returning to North Birchland to find Jennie Hapgood there for
a promised visit.

At the moment, however, that we find Dorothy and Tavia at the beginning
of this chapter, neither girl is thinking much about Jennie Hapgood and
her expected visit, or of anything else of minor importance.

The flashily dressed woman who had run after Tavia down the aisle,
again screamed her accusation at the amazed and troubled girl:

“That’s my bag! It’s cram full of money, too.”

There was no great crowd in the store, for New York ladies do not as
a rule shop much before luncheon. Nevertheless, besides salespeople,
there were plenty to hear the woman’s unkind accusation and enough
curious shoppers to ring in immediately the two troubled girls and the
angry woman.

“Give me it!” exclaimed the latter, and snatched the bag out of Tavia’s
hand. As this was done the catch slipped in some way and the handbag
burst open.

It was “cram full” of money. Bills of large denomination were rolled
carelessly into a ball, with a handkerchief, a purse for change,
several keys, and a vanity box. Some of these things tumbled out upon
the floor and a young boy stooped and recovered them for her.

“You’re a bad, bad girl!” declared the angry woman. “I hope they send
you to jail.”

“Why—why, I didn’t know it was yours,” murmured Tavia, quite upset.

“Oh! you thought somebody had forgotten it and you could get away with
it,” declared the other, coarsely enough.

“I beg your pardon, Madam,” Dorothy Dale here interposed. “It was a
mistake on my friend’s part. And _you_ are making another mistake, and
a serious one.”

She spoke in her most dignified tone, and although Dorothy was barely
in her twentieth year she had the manner and stability of one much
older. She realized that poor Tavia was in danger of “going all to
pieces” if the strain continued. And, too, her own anger at the woman’s
harsh accusation naturally put the girl on her mettle.

“Who are _you_, I’d like to know?” snapped the woman.

“I am her friend,” said Dorothy Dale, quite composedly, “and I know her
to be incapable of taking your bag save by chance. She laid her own
down on the counter and took up yours——”

“And where _is_ mine?” suddenly wailed Tavia, on the verge of an
hysterical outbreak. “My bag! My money——”

“Hush!” whispered Dorothy in her friend’s pretty ear. “Don’t become a
second harridan—like this creature.”

The woman had led the way back to the silk counter. Tavia began to claw
wildly among the broken bolts of silk that the clerk had not yet been
able to return to the shelves. But she stopped at Dorothy’s command,
and stood, pale and trembling.

A floorwalker hastened forward. He evidently knew the noisy woman as a
good customer of the store.

“Mrs. Halbridge! What is the matter? Nothing serious, I hope?”

“It would have been serious all right,” said the customer, in her
high-pitched voice, “if I hadn’t just seen that girl by luck. Yes,
by luck! There she was making for the door with this bag of mine—and
there’s several hundred dollars in it, I’d have you know.”

“I beg of you, Mrs. Halbridge,” said the floorwalker in a low tone,
“for the sake of the store to make no trouble about it here. If you
insist we will take the girl up to the superintendent’s office——”

Here Dorothy, her anger rising interrupted:

“You would better not. Mrs. Winthrop White, of North Birchland, is a
charge customer of your store, and is probably just as well known to
the heads of the firm as this—this person,” and she cast what Tavia—in
another mood—would have called a “scathing glance” at Mrs. Halbridge.

“I am Mrs. White’s niece and this is my particular friend. We are here
alone on a shopping tour; but if our word is not quite as good as that
of this—this person, we certainly shall buy elsewhere.”

Tavia, obsessed with a single idea, murmured again:

“But I haven’t got my bag! Somebody’s taken my bag! And all my money——”

The floorwalker was glancing about, hoping for some avenue of escape
from the unfortunate predicament, when a very tall, white-haired and
soldierly looking man appeared in the aisle.

“Mr. Schuman!” gasped the floorwalker.

The man was one of the chief proprietors of the big store. He scowled
slightly at the floorwalker when he saw the excited crowd, and then
raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“This is not the place for any lengthy discussion, Mr. Mink,” said Mr.
Schuman, with just the proper touch of admonition in his tone.

“I know! I know, Mr. Schuman!” said the floorwalker. “But this
difficulty—it came so suddenly—Mrs. Halbridge, here, makes the
complaint,” he finally blurted out, in an attempt to shoulder off some
of the responsibility for the unfortunate situation.

“Mrs. Halbridge?” The old gentleman bowed in a most courtly style. “One
of our customers, I presume, Mr. Mink?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, Mr. Schuman,” the floorwalker hastened to say. “One
of our _very_ good customers. And I am so sorry that anything should
have happened——”

“But what has happened?” asked Mr. Schuman, sharply.

“She—she accuses this—it’s all a mistake, I’m sure—this young lady of
taking her bag,” stuttered Mr. Mink, pointing to Tavia.

“She ought to be arrested,” muttered the excited Mrs. Halbridge.

“What? But this is a matter for the superintendent’s office, Mr.
Mink,” returned Mr. Schuman.

“Oh!” stammered the floorwalker. “The bag is returned.”

“And now,” put in Dorothy Dale, haughtily, and looking straight and
unflinchingly into the keen eyes of Mr. Schuman, “my friend wishes to
know what has become of _her_ bag?”

Mr. Schuman looked at the two girls with momentary hesitation.

There was something compelling in the ladylike look and behaviour of
these two girls—and especially in Dorothy’s speech. At the moment, too,
a hand was laid tentatively upon Mr. Schuman’s arm.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said the full, resonant voice that Dorothy had noted
the day before. “I know the young ladies—Miss Dale and Miss Travers,
respectively, Mr. Schuman.”

“Oh, Mr. Knapp—thank you!” said the old gentleman, turning to the tall
young Westerner with whom he had been walking through the store at the
moment he had spied the crowd. “You are a discourager of embarrassment.”

“Oh! blessed ‘G. K.’!” whispered Tavia, weakly clinging to Dorothy’s
arm.




CHAPTER III

TAVIA IN THE SHADE


Mrs. Halbridge was slyly slipping through the crowd. She had suddenly
lost all interest in the punishment of the girl she had accused of
stealing her bag and her money.

There was something so stern about Mr. Schuman that it was not strange
that the excitable woman should fear further discussion of the matter.
The old gentleman turned at once to Dorothy Dale and Tavia Travers.

“This is an unfortunate and regrettable incident, young ladies,” he
said suavely. “I assure you that such things as this seldom occur under
our roof.”

“I am confident it is a single occurrence,” Dorothy said, with
conviction, “or my aunt, Mrs. Winthrop White, of North Birchland, would
not have traded with you for so many years.”

“One of our charge customers, Mr. Schuman,” whispered Mr. Mink,
deciding it was quite time now to come to the assistance of the girls.

“Regrettable! Regrettable!” repeated the old gentleman.

Here Tavia again entered her wailing protest:

“I did not mean to take her bag from the counter. But somebody has
taken my bag.”

“Oh, Tavia!” exclaimed her friend, now startled into noticing what
Tavia really said about it.

“It’s gone!” wailed Tavia. “And all the money father sent me. Oh,
dear, Doro Dale! I guess I _have_ thrown my money away, and, as you
prophesied, it isn’t as much fun as I thought it might be.”

“My dear young lady,” hastily inquired Mr. Schuman, “have you really
lost your purse?”

“My bag,” sobbed Tavia. “I laid it down while I examined some silk.
That clerk saw me,” she added, pointing to the man behind the counter.

“It is true, Mr. Schuman,” the silk clerk admitted, blushing painfully.
“But, of course, I did not notice what became of the lady’s bag.”

“Nor did I see the other bag until I found it in my hand,” Tavia cried.

The crowd was dissipated by this time, and all spoke in low voices.
Outside the counter was a cash-girl, a big-eyed and big-eared little
thing, who was evidently listening curiously to the conversation. Mr.
Mink said sharply to her:

“Number forty-seven! do you know anything about this bag business?”

“No—no, sir!” gasped the frightened girl.

“Then go on about your business,” the floorwalker said, waving her away
in his most lordly manner.

Meanwhile, Dorothy had obtained a word with the young Mr. Knapp who had
done her and Tavia such a kindness.

“Thank you a thousand times, Mr. Knapp,” she whispered, her eyes
shining gratefully into his. “It might have been awkward for us without
you. And,” she added, pointedly, “how fortunate you knew our names!”

He was smiling broadly, but she saw the color rise in his bronzed
cheeks at her last remark. She liked him all the better for blushing so
boyishly.

“Got me there, Miss Dale,” he blurted out. “I was curious, and I looked
on the hotel register to see your names after the clerk brought it
back from the parlor where he went to greet you yesterday. Hope you’ll
forgive me for being so—er—rubbery.”

“It proves to be a very fortunate curiosity on your part,” she told
him, smiling.

“Say!” he whispered, “your friend is all broken up over this. Has she
lost much?”

“All the money she had to pay for the clothes she wished to buy, I’m
afraid,” sighed Dorothy.

“Well, let’s get her out of here—go somewhere to recuperate. There’s a
good hotel across the street. I had my breakfast there before I began
to shop,” and he laughed. “A cup of tea will revive her, I’m sure.”

“And you are suffering for a cup, too, I am sure,” Dorothy told him,
her eyes betraying her amusement, at his rather awkward attempt to
become friendly with Tavia and herself.

But Dorothy approved of this young man. Aside from the assistance he
had undoubtedly rendered her chum and herself, G. Knapp seemed to be
far above the average young man.

She turned now quickly to Tavia. Mr. Schuman was saying very kindly:

“Search shall be made, my dear young lady. I am exceedingly sorry that
such a thing should happen in our store. Of course, somebody picked
up your bag before you inadvertently took the other lady’s. If I had
my way I would have it a law that every shopper should have her purse
riveted to her wrist with a chain.”

It was no laughing matter, however, for poor Tavia. Her family was not
in the easy circumstances that Dorothy’s was. Indeed, Mr. Travers was
only fairly well-to-do, and Tavia’s mother was exceedingly extravagant.
It was difficult sometimes for Tavia to obtain sufficient money to get
along with.

Besides, she was incautious herself. It was natural for her to be
wasteful and thoughtless. But this was the first time in her experience
that she had either wasted or lost such a sum of money.

She wiped her eyes very quickly when Dorothy whispered to her that they
were going out for a cup of tea with Mr. Knapp.

“Oh dear, that perfectly splendid cowboy person!” groaned Tavia. “And
I am in no mood to make an impression. Doro! you’ll have to do it all
yourself this time. Do keep him in play until I recover from, this
blow—if I ever do.”

The young man, who led the way to the side door of the store which was
opposite the hotel and restaurant of which he had spoken, heard the
last few words and turned to ask seriously:

“Surely Miss Travers did not lose _all_ the money she had?”

“All I had in the world!” wailed Tavia. “Except a lonely little five
dollar bill.”

“Where is that?” asked Dorothy, in surprise.

“In the First National Bank,” Tavia said demurely.

“Oh, then, _that’s_ safe enough,” said Mr. Knapp.

“I didn’t know you had even that much in the bank,” remarked Dorothy,
doubtfully. “The First National?”

“Yep!” declared Tavia promptly, but nudged her friend. “Hush!” she
hissed.

Dorothy did not understand, but she saw there was something queer
about this statement. It was news to her that her chum ever thought of
putting a penny on deposit in any bank. It was not like Tavia.

“How do you feel now, dear?” she asked the unfortunate girl, as they
stepped out into the open air behind the broad-shouldered young
Westerner, who held the door open for their passage.

“Oh, dear me!” sighed Tavia. “I’m forty degrees in the shade—and the
temperature is still going down. What ever _shall_ I do? I’ll be
positively naked before Thanksgiving!”




CHAPTER IV

SOMETHING ABOUT “G. KNAPP”


But how can three people with all the revivifying flow of youth in
their veins remain in the dumps, to use one of Tavia’s own illuminating
expressions. Impossible! That tea at the Holyoke House, which began so
miserably, scaled upward like the notes of a coloratura soprano until
they were all three chatting and laughing like old friends. Even Tavia
had to forget her miserable financial state.

Dorothy believed her first impression of G. Knapp had not been wrong.
Indeed, he improved with every moment of increasing familiarity.

In the first place, although his repartee was bright enough, and he was
very jolly and frank, he had eyes and attention for somebody besides
the chatterbox, Tavia. Perhaps right at first Tavia was a little under
the mark, her mind naturally being upon her troubles; but with a
strange young man before her the gay and sparkling Tavia would soon be
inspired.

However, for once she did not absorb all the more or less helpless
male’s attention. G. Knapp insisted upon dividing equally his glances,
his speeches, and his smiles between the two young ladies.

They discovered that his full and proper name was Garford Knapp—the
first, of course, shortened to “Garry.” He was of the West, Western,
without a doubt. He had secured a degree at a Western university,
although both before and after his scholastic course he had, as Tavia
in the beginning suggested, been a “cowboy person.”

“And it looks as if I’d be punching cows and doing other chores for Bob
Douglas, who owns the Four-Square ranch, for the rest of my natural,”
was one thing Garry Knapp told the girls, and told them cheerfully.
“I did count on falling heir to a piece of money when Uncle Terrence
cashed in. But not—no more!”

“Why is that?” Dorothy asked, seeing that the young man was serious
despite his somewhat careless way of speaking.

“The old codger is just like tinder,” laughed Garry. “Lights up if a
spark gets to him. And I unfortunately and unintentionally applied
the spark. He’s gone off to Alaska mad as a hatter and left me in the
lurch. And we were chums when I was a kid and until I came back from
college.”

“You mean you have quarreled with your uncle?” Dorothy queried, with
some seriousness.

“Not at all, Miss Dale,” he declared, promptly. “The old fellow
quarreled with me. They say it takes two to make a quarrel. That’s not
always so. One can do it just as _e-easy_. At least, one like Uncle
Terrence can. He had red hair when he was young, and he has a strong
fighting Irish strain in him. The row began over nothing and ended with
his lighting out between evening and sunrise and leaving me flat.

“Of course, I broke into a job with Bob Douglas right away——”

“Do you mean, Mr. Knapp, that your uncle went away and left you without
money?” Dorothy asked.

“Only what I chanced to have in my pocket,” Garry Knapp said
cheerfully. “He’d always been mighty good to me. Put me through
school and all that. All I have is a piece of land—and a good big
piece—outside of Desert City; but it isn’t worth much. Cattle raising
is petering out in that region. Last year the mouth and hoof disease
just about ruined the man that grazed my land. His cattle died like
flies.

“Then, the land was badly grazed by sheepmen for years. Sheep about
poison land for anything else to live on,” he added, with a cattleman’s
usual disgust at the thought of “mutton on the hoof.”

“One thing I’ve come East for, Miss Dale, is to sell that land. Got
a sort of tentative offer by mail. Bob wanted a lot of stuff for the
ranch and for his family and couldn’t come himself. So I combined his
business and mine and hope to make a sale of the land my father left me
before I go back.

“Then, with that nest-egg, I’ll try to break into some game that will
offer a man-sized profit,” and Garry Knapp laughed again in his mellow,
whole-souled way.

“Isn’t he just a _dear_?” whispered Tavia as Garry turned to speak to
the waiter. “Don’t you love to hear him talk?”

“And have you never heard from your old uncle who went away and left
you?” Dorothy asked.

“Not a word. He’s too mad to speak, let alone write,” and a cloud for
a moment crossed the open, handsome face of the Westerner. “But I know
where he is, and every once in a while somebody writes me telling me
Uncle Terry is all right.”

“But, an old man, away up there in Alaska——?”

“Bless you, Miss Dale,” chuckled Garry Knapp. “That dear old codger has
been knocking about in rough country all his days. He’s always been a
miner. Prospected pretty well all over our West. He’s made, and then
bunted away, big fortunes sometimes.

“He always has a stake laid down somewhere. Never gets real poor, and
never went hungry in his life—unless he chanced to run out of grub on
some prospecting tour, or his gun was broken and he couldn’t shoot a
jackrabbit for a stew.

“Oh, Uncle Terrence isn’t at all the sort of hampered prospector you
read about in the books. He doesn’t go mooning around, expecting to
‘strike it rich’ and running the risk of leaving his bones in the
desert.

“No, Uncle Terry is likely to make another fortune before he dies——”

“Oh! Then maybe you will be rich!” cried Tavia, breaking in.

“No.” Garry shook his head with a quizzical smile on his lips and
in his eyes. “No. He vowed I should never see the color of his
money. First, he said, he’d leave it to found a home for indignant
rattlesnakes. And he’d surely have plenty of inmates, for rattlers seem
always to be indignant,” he added with a chuckle.

Dorothy wanted awfully to ask him why he had quarreled with his
uncle—or _vice versa_; but that would have been too personal upon first
meeting. She liked the young man more and more; and in spite of Tavia’s
loss they parted at the end of the hour in great good spirits.

“I’m going to be just as busy as I can be this afternoon,” Garry Knapp
announced, as they went out. “But I shall get back to the hotel to
supper. I wasn’t in last night when you ladies were down. May I eat at
your table?” and his eyes squinted up again in that droll way Dorothy
had come to look for.

“How do you know we ate in the hotel last evening?” demanded Tavia,
promptly.

“Asked the head waiter,” replied Garry Knapp, unabashed.

“If you are so much interested in whether we take proper nourishment or
not, you had better join us at dinner,” Dorothy said, laughing.

“It’s a bet!” declared the young Westerner, and lifting his
broad-brimmed hat he left the girls upon the sidewalk outside the
restaurant.

“Isn’t he the very nicest—but, oh, Doro! what shall I do?” exclaimed
the miserable Tavia. “All my money——”

“Let’s go back and see if it’s been found.”

“Oh, not a chance!” gasped Tavia. “That horrid woman——”

“I scarcely believe that we can lay it to Mrs. Halbridge’s door in any
particular,” said Dorothy, gravely. “You should not have left your bag
on the counter.”

“She laid hers there! And, oh, Doro! it was full of money,” sighed her
friend.

“Probably your bag had been taken before you even touched hers.”

“Oh, dear! why did it have to happen to _me_—and at just this time.
When I need things so much. Not a thing to wear! And it’s going to be a
cold, cold winter, too!”

Tavia would joke “if the heavens fell”—that was her nature. But that
she was seriously embarrassed for funds Dorothy Dale knew right well.

“If it had only been your bag that was lost,” wailed Tavia, “you would
telegraph to Aunt Winnie and get more money!”

“And I shall do that in this case,” said her friend, placidly.

“Oh! no you won’t!” cried Tavia, suddenly. “I will not take another
cent from your Aunt Winnie White—who’s the most blessed, generous,
free, open-handed person who ever——”

“Goodness! no further attributes?” laughed Dorothy.

“No, Doro,” Tavia said, suddenly serious. “I have done this thing
myself. It is _awful_. Poor old daddy earns his money too hardly for
_me_ to throw it away. I should know better. I should have learned
caution and economy by this time with you, my dear, as an example ever
before me.

“Poor mother wastes money because she doesn’t _know_. I have had every
advantage of a bright and shining example,” and she pinched Dorothy’s
arm as they entered the big store again. “If I have lost my money, I’ve
lost it, and that’s the end of it. No new clothes for little Tavia—and
serves her right!” she finished, bitterly.

Dorothy well knew that this was a tragic happening for her friend.
Generously she would have sent for more money, or divided her own store
with Tavia. But she knew her chum to be in earnest, and she approved.

It was not as though Tavia had nothing to wear. She had a full and
complete wardrobe, only it would be no longer up to date. And she would
have to curtail much of the fun the girls had looked forward to on
this, their first trip, unchaperoned, to the great city.




CHAPTER V

DOROTHY IS DISTURBED


Nothing, of course, had been seen or heard of Tavia’s bag. Mr. Schuman
himself had made the investigation, and he came to the girls personally
to tell them how extremely sorry he was. But being sorry did not help.

“I’m done for!” groaned Tavia, as they returned to their rooms at the
hotel just before luncheon. “I can’t even buy a stick of peppermint
candy to send to the kids at Dalton.”

“How about that five dollars in the bank?” asked Dorothy, suddenly
remembering Tavia’s previous and most surprising statement. “And how
did you ever come to have a bank account? Is it in the First National
of Dalton?”

There was a laugh from Tavia, a sudden flash of lingerie and the
display of a silk stocking. Then she held out to her chum a neatly
folded banknote wrapped in tissue paper.

[Illustration: THE TWO GIRLS STEPPED OUT OF THE ELEVATOR AND FOUND
GARRY KNAPP WAITING FOR THEM.

  _Dorothy Dale’s Engagement_      _Page 41_
]

“First National Bank of Womankind,” she cried gaily. “I always carry it
there in case of accident—being run over, robbed, or an earthquake. But
that five dollars is all I own. Oh, dear! I wish I had stuffed the
whole roll into my stocking.”

“Don’t, Tavia! it’s not ladylike.”

“I don’t care. Pockets are out of style again,” pouted her friend.
“And, anyway, you must admit that _this_ was a stroke of genius, for I
would otherwise be without a penny.”

However, Tavia was too kind-hearted, as well as light-hearted, to allow
her loss to cloud the day for Dorothy. She was just as enthusiastic in
the afternoon in helping her friend select the goods she wished to buy
as though all the “pretties” were for herself.

They came home toward dusk, tired enough, and lay down for an
hour—“relaxing as per instructions of Lovely Lucy Larriper, the
afternoon newspaper statistician,” Tavia said.

“Why ‘statistician’?” asked Dorothy, wonderingly.

“Why! isn’t she a ‘figger’ expert?” laughed Tavia. “Now relax!”

A brisk bath followed and then, at seven, the two girls stepped out of
the elevator into the lobby of the hotel and found Garry Knapp waiting
for them. He was likewise well tubbed and scrubbed, but he did not
conform to city custom and wear evening dress. Indeed, Dorothy could
not imagine him in the black and severe habiliments of society.

“Not that his figure would not carry them well,” she thought.
“But he would somehow seem out of place. Some of his breeziness
and—and—yes!—his _nice_ kind of ‘freshness’ would be gone. That gray
business suit becomes him and so does his hat.”

But, of course, the hat was not in evidence at present. The captain of
the waiters had evidently expected this party, for he beckoned them to
a retired table the moment the trio entered the long dining-room.

“How cozy!” exclaimed Dorothy. “You must have what they call a ‘pull’
with people in authority, Mr. Knapp.”

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Why, you can get the best table in the dining-room, and this morning
you rescued us from trouble through your acquaintanceship with Mr.
Schuman.”

“The influence of the Almighty Dollar,” said Garry Knapp, briefly.
“This morning I had just spent several hundred dollars of Bob Douglass’
good money in that store. And here at this hotel Bob’s name is as good
as a gold certificate.”

“Oh, money! money!” groaned Tavia, “what crimes are committed in thy
name—and likewise, what benefits achieved! I wonder what the person who
stole it is doing with _my_ money?”

“Perhaps it was somebody who needed it more than you do,” said
Dorothy, rather quizzically.

“Can’t be such a person. And needy people seldom find money. Besides,
needy folk are always honest—in the books. I’m honest myself, and
heaven knows I’m needy!”

“Was it truly all the money you had with you?” asked Garry Knapp,
commiseratingly.

“Honest and true, black and blue, lay me down and cut me in two!”
chanted Tavia.

“All but the five dollars in the bank,” Dorothy said demurely, but with
dancing eyes.

And for once Tavia actually blushed and was silenced—for a moment.
Garry drawled:

“I wonder who did get your bag, Miss Travers? Of course, there are
always light-fingered people hanging about a store like that.”

“And the money will be put to no good use,” declared the loser,
dejectedly. “If the person finding it would only found a hospital—or
something—with it, I’d feel a lot better. But I know just what will
happen.”

“What?” asked Dorothy.

“The person who took my bag will go and blow themselves to a fancy
dinner—oh! better even than _this_ one. I only hope he or she will eat
so much that they will be sick——”

“Don’t! don’t!” begged Dorothy, stopping her ears. “You are dreadfully
mixed in your grammar.”

“Do you wonder? After having been robbed so ruthlessly?”

“But, certainly, dear,” cooed Dorothy, “your knowledge of grammar was
not in your bag, too?”

Thus they joked over Tavia’s tragedy; but all the time Dorothy’s agile
mind was working hard to scheme out a way to help her chum over this
very, very hard place.

Just at this time, however, she had to give some thought to Garry
Knapp. He took out three slips of pasteboard toward the end of the very
pleasant meal and flipped them upon the cloth.

“I took a chance,” he said, in his boyish way. “There’s a good show
down the street—kill a little time. Vaudeville and pictures. Good
seats.”

“Oh, let’s!” cried Tavia, clasping her hands.

Dorothy knew that the theatre in question was respectable enough,
although the entertainment was not of the Broadway class. But she knew,
too, that this young man from the West probably could not afford to pay
two dollars or more for a seat for an evening’s pleasure.

“Of course we’ll be delighted to go. And we’d better go at once,”
Dorothy said, without hesitation. “I’m ready. Are you, Tavia?”

“You dear!” whispered Tavia, squeezing her arm as they followed Garry
Knapp from the dining-room. “I never before knew you to be so amenable
where a young man was concerned.”

“Is that so?” drawled Dorothy, but hid her face from her friend’s sharp
eyes.

It was late, but a fine, bright, dry evening when the trio came out of
the theatre and walked slowly toward their hotel. On the block in the
middle of which the Fanuel was situated there were but few pedestrians.
As they approached the main entrance to the hotel a girl came slowly
toward them, peering, it seemed, sharply into their faces.

She was rather shabbily dressed, but was not at all an unattractive
looking girl. Dorothy noticed that her passing glance was for Garry
Knapp, not for herself or for Tavia. The young man had half dropped
behind as they approached the hotel entrance and was saying:

“I think I’ll take a brisk walk for a bit, having seen you ladies
home after a very charming evening. I feel kind of shut in after that
theatre, and want to expand my lungs.”

“Good-night, then, Mr. Knapp,” Dorothy said lightly. “And thank you for
a pleasant evening.”

“Ditto!” Tavia said, hiding a little yawn behind her gloved fingers.

The girls stepped toward the open door of the hotel. Garry Knapp
wheeled and started back the way they had come. Tavia clutched her
chum’s arm with excitement.

“Did you see that girl?”

“Why—yes,” Dorothy said wonderingly.

“Look back! Quick!”

Impelled by her chum’s tone, Dorothy turned and looked up the street.
Garry Knapp had overtaken the girl. The girl looked sidewise at
him—they could see her turn her head—and then she evidently spoke.
Garry dropped into slow step with her, and they strolled along, talking
eagerly.

“Why, he must know her!” gasped Tavia.

“Why didn’t he introduce her then?” Dorothy said shortly. “It serves me
right.”

“What serves you right?”

“For allowing you, as well as myself, to become so familiar with a
strange man.”

“Oh!” murmured Tavia, slowly. “It’s not so bad as all _that_. You’re
making a mountain out of a molehill.”

But Dorothy would not listen.




CHAPTER VI

SOMETHING OF A MYSTERY


Tavia slept her usually sweet, sound sleep that night, despite the
strange surroundings of the hotel and the happenings of a busy day; but
Dorothy lay for a long time, unable to close her eyes.

In the morning, however, she was as deep in slumber as ever her chum
was when a knock came on the door of their anteroom. Both girls sat up
and said in chorus:

“Who’s there?”

“It’s jes’ me, Missy,” said the soft voice of the colored maid. “Did
one o’ youse young ladies lost somethin’?”

“Oh, mercy me, yes!” shouted Tavia, jumping completely out of her bed
and running toward the door.

“Nonsense, Tavia!” admonished Dorothy, likewise hopping out of bed.
“She can’t have found your money.”

“Oh! what is it, please?” asked Tavia, opening the door just a trifle.

“Has you lost somethin’?” repeated the colored girl.

“I lost my handbag in a store yesterday,” said Tavia.

“Das it, Missy,” chuckled the maid. “De clark, he axed me to ax yo’
’bout it. It’s done come back.”

“What’s come back?” demanded Dorothy, likewise appearing at the door
and in the same dishabille as her friend.

“De bag. De clark tol’ me to tell yo’ ladies dat all de money is safe
in it, too. Now yo’ kin go back to sleep again. He’s done got de bag in
he’s safe;” and the girl went away chuckling.

Tavia fell up against the door and stared at Dorothy.

“Oh, Doro! Can it be?” she panted.

“Oh, Tavia! What luck!”

“There’s the telephone! I’m going to call up the office,” and Tavia
darted for the instrument on the wall.

But there was something the matter with the wires; that was why the
clerk had sent the maid to the room.

“Then I’m going to dress and go right down and see about it,” Tavia
said.

“But it’s only six o’clock,” yawned Dorothy. “The maid was right. We
should go back to bed.”

Her friend scorned the suggestion and she fairly “hopped” into her
clothes.

“Be sure and powder your nose, dear,” laughed Dorothy. “But I _am_ glad
for you, Tavia.”

“Bother my nose!” responded her friend, running out of her room and
into the corridor.

She whisked back again before Dorothy was more than half dressed with
the precious bag in her hands.

“Oh, it is! it is!” she cried, whirling about Dorothy’s room and her
own and the bath and anteroom, in a dervish dance of joy. “Doro! Doro!
I’m saved!”

“I don’t know whether you are saved or not, dear. But you plainly are
delighted.”

“Every penny safe.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. I counted. I had to sign a receipt for the clerk, too. He is
the _dearest_ man.”

“Well, dear, I hope this will be a lesson to you,” Dorothy said.

“It will be!” declared the excited Tavia. “Do you know what I am going
to do?”

“Spend your money more recklessly than ever, I suppose,” sighed her
friend.

“Say! seems to me you’re awfully glum this morning. You’re not nice
about my good luck—not a bit,” and Tavia stared at her in puzzlement.

“Of course I’m delighted that you should recover your bag,” Dorothy
hastened to say. “How did it come back?”

“Why, the clerk gave it to me, I tell you.”

“What clerk? The one at the silk counter?”

“Goodness! The hotel clerk downstairs.”

“But how did _he_ come by it?”

Tavia slowly sat down and blinked. “Why—why,” she said, “I didn’t even
think to ask him.”

“Well, Tavia!” exclaimed Dorothy, rather aghast at this admission of
her flyaway friend.

“I do seem to have been awfully thoughtless again,” admitted Tavia,
slowly. “I thanked him—the clerk, I mean! Oh, I did! I could have
kissed him!”

“Tavia!”

“I could; but I didn’t,” said the wicked Tavia, her eyes sparkling
once more. “But I never thought to ask how he came by it. Maybe some
poor person found it and should be rewarded. Should I give a tithe of
it, Doro, as a reward, as we give a tithe to the church? Let’s see! I
had just eighty-nine dollars and thirty-seven cents, and an old copper
penny for a pocket-piece. One-tenth of that would be——”

“Do be sensible!” exclaimed Dorothy, rather tartly for her. “You might
at least have asked how the bag was sent here—whether by the store
itself, or by some employee, or brought by some outside person.”

“Goodness! if it were your money would you have been so curious?”
demanded Tavia. “I don’t believe it. You would have been just as
excited as I was.”

“Perhaps,” admitted Dorothy, after a moment. “Anyway, I’m glad you have
it back, dear.”

“And do you know what I am going to do? I am going to take that old
man’s advice.”

“What old man, Tavia?”

“That Mr. Schuman—the head of the big store. I am going to go out right
after breakfast and buy me a dog chain and chain that bag to my wrist.”

Dorothy laughed at this—yet she did not laugh happily. There was
something wrong with her, and as soon as Tavia began to quiet down a
bit she noticed it again.

“Doro,” she exclaimed, “I do believe something has happened to you!”

“What something?”

“I don’t know. But you are not—not happy. What is it?”

“Hungry,” said Dorothy, shortly. “Do stop primping now and come on down
to breakfast.”

“Well, you must be savagely hungry then, if it makes you like this,”
grumbled Tavia. “And it is an hour before our usual breakfast time.”

They went down in the elevator to the lower floor, Tavia carrying the
precious bag. She would not trust it out of her sight again, she said,
as long as a penny was left in it.

She attempted to go over to the clerk’s desk at the far side of the
lobby to ask for the details of the recovery of her bag; but there were
several men at the desk and Dorothy stopped her.

“Wait until he is more at leisure,” she advised Tavia. “And until there
are not so many men about.”

“Oh, nonsense!” ejaculated Tavia, but she turned to follow Dorothy.
Then she added: “Ah, there is one you won’t mind speaking to——”

“Where?” cried Dorothy, stopping instantly.

“Going into the dining-room,” said Tavia.

Dorothy then saw the gray back of Garford Knapp ahead of them. She
turned swiftly for the exit of the hotel.

“Come!” she said, “let’s get a breath of air before breakfast. It—it
will give us an appetite!” And she fairly dragged Tavia to the sidewalk.

“Well, I declare to goodness!” volleyed Tavia, staring at her. “And
just now you were as hungry as a bear. And you still seem to have a
bear’s nature. How rough! Don’t you want to see that young man?”

“Never!” snapped Dorothy, and started straight along toward the Hudson
River.

Tavia was for the moment silenced. But after a bit she asked slyly:

“You’re not really going to walk clear home, are you, dear? North
Birchland is a long, long walk—and the river intervenes.”

Dorothy had to laugh. But her face almost immediately fell into very
serious lines. Tavia, for once, considered her chum’s feelings. She
said nothing regarding Garry Knapp.

“Well,” she murmured. “_I_ need no appetite—no more than I have. Aren’t
you going to eat at all this morning, Dorothy?”

“Here is a restaurant; let us go in,” said her friend promptly.

They did so, and Dorothy lingered over the meal (which was nowhere
as good as that they would have secured at the Fanuel) until she was
positive that Mr. Knapp must have finished his own breakfast and left
the hotel.

In fact, they saw him run out and catch a car in front of the hotel
entrance while they were still some rods from the door. Dorothy at once
became brisker of movement, hurrying Tavia along.

“We must really shop to-day,” she said with decision. “Not merely look
and window-shop.”

“Surely,” agreed Tavia.

“And we’ll not come back to luncheon—it takes too much time,” Dorothy
went on, as they hurried into the elevator. “Perhaps we can get
tickets for that nice play Ned and Nat saw when they were down here
last time. Then, if we do, we will stay uptown for dinner——”

“Mercy! All that time in the same clothes and without the prescribed
‘relax’?” groaned Tavia. “We’ll look as though we had been ground
between the upper and the nether millstone.”

“Well——”

They had reached their rooms. Tavia turned upon her and suddenly seized
Dorothy by both shoulders, looking accusingly into her friend’s eyes.

“I know what you are up to. You are running away from that man.”

“Oh! What——”

“Never mind trying to dodge the issue,” said Tavia, sternly. “That
Garry Knapp. And it seems he must be a pretty nappy sort, sure enough.
He probably knew that girl and was ashamed to have us see him speaking
to one so shabby. Now! what do you care what he does?”

“I don’t,” denied Dorothy, hotly. “I’m only ashamed that we have been
seen with him. And it is my fault.”

“I’d like to know why?”

“It was unnecessary for us to have become so friendly with him just
because he did us a favor.”

“Yes—but——”

“It was I. I did it,” said Dorothy, almost in tears. “We should never
allow ourselves to become acquainted with strangers in any such way.
Now you see what it means, Tavia. It is not your fault—it is mine. But
it should teach you a lesson as well as me.”

“Goodness!” said the startled Tavia. “I don’t see that it is anything
very terrible. The fellow is really nothing to us.”

“But people having seen us with him—and then seeing him with that
common-acting girl——”

“Pooh! what do we care?” repeated Tavia. “Garry Knapp is nothing to us,
and never would be.”

Dorothy said not another word, but turned quickly away from her friend.
She was very quiet while they made ready for their shopping trip, and
Tavia could not arouse her.

Careless and unobservant as Tavia was, anything seriously the matter
with her chum always influenced her. She gradually “simmered down”
herself, and when they started forth from their rooms both girls were
morose.

As they passed through the lobby a bellhop was called to the desk, and
then he charged after the two girls.

“Please, Miss! Which is Miss Dale?” he asked, looking at the letter in
his hand.

Dorothy held out her hand and took it. It was written on the hotel
stationery, and the handwriting was strange to her. She tore it open
at once. She read the line or two of the note, and then stopped,
stunned.

“What is it?” asked Tavia, wonderingly.

Dorothy handed her the note. It was signed “G. Knapp” and read as
follows:

  “Dear Miss Dale:

 “Did your friend get her bag and money all right?”




CHAPTER VII

GARRY SEES A WALL AHEAD


“Why, what under the sun! How did _he_ come to know about it?” demanded
Tavia. “Goodness!”

“He—he maybe—had something to do with recovering it for you,” Dorothy
said faintly. Yet in her heart she knew that it was hope that suggested
the idea, not reason.

“Well, I am going to find out right now,” declared Tavia Travers, and
she marched back to the clerk’s desk before Dorothy could object, had
she desired to.

“This note to my friend is from Mr. Knapp, who is stopping here,” Tavia
said to the young man behind the counter. “Did he have anything to do
with getting back my bag?”

“I know nothing about your bag, Miss,” said the clerk. “I was not on
duty, I presume, when it was handed in. You are Miss——”

“Travers.”

The clerk went to the safe and found a memorandum, which he read and
then returned to the desk.

“Your supposition is correct, Miss Travers. Mr. Knapp handed in the
handbag and took a receipt for it.”

“When did he do that?” asked Tavia, quickly, almost overpowered with
amazement.

“Some time during the night. Before I came on duty at seven o’clock.”

“Well! isn’t that the strangest thing?” Tavia said to Dorothy, when she
rejoined her friend at the hotel entrance after thanking the clerk.

“How ever could he have got it in the night?” murmured Dorothy.

“Say! he’s all right—Garry Knapp is!” Tavia cried, shaking the bag to
which she now clung so tightly, and almost on the verge of doing a few
“steps of delight” on the public thoroughfare. “I could hug him!”

“It—it is very strange,” murmured Dorothy, for she was still very much
disturbed in her mind.

“It’s particularly jolly,” said Tavia. “And I am going to—well,
thank him, at least,” as she saw her friend start and glance at her
admonishingly, “just the very first chance I get. But I ought to hug
him! He deserves _some_ reward. You said yourself that perhaps I should
reward the finder.”

“Mr. Knapp could not possibly have been the finder. The bag was merely
returned through him.” Dorothy spoke positively.

“Don’t care. I must be grateful to somebody,” wailed Tavia. “Don’t nip
my finer feelings in the bud. Your name should be Frost—Mademoiselle
Jacquesette Frost! You’re always nipping me.”

Dorothy, however, remained grave. She plainly saw that this incident
foretold complications. She had made up her mind that she and Tavia
would have nothing more to do with the Westerner, Garry Knapp; and now
her friend would insist on thanking him—of course, she must if only for
politeness’ sake—and any further intercourse with Mr. Knapp would make
the situation all the more difficult.

She wished with all her heart that their shopping was over, and then
she could insist upon taking the train immediately out of New York,
even if she had to sink to the abhorred subterfuge of playing ill, and
so frightening Tavia.

She wished they might move to some other hotel; but if they did that an
explanation must be made to Aunt Winnie as well as to Tavia. It seemed
to Dorothy that she blushed all over—fairly _burned_—whenever she
thought of discussing her feelings regarding Garry Knapp.

Never before in her experience had Dorothy Dale been so quickly and so
favorably impressed by a man. Tavia had joked about it, but she by no
means understood how deeply Dorothy felt. And Dorothy would have been
mortified to the quick had she been obliged to tell even her dearest
chum the truth.

Dorothy’s home training had been most delicate. Of course, in the
boarding school she and Tavia had attended there were many sorts
of girls; but all were from good families, and Mrs. Pangborn, the
preceptress of Glenwood, had had a strict oversight over her girls’
moral growth as well as over their education.

Dorothy’s own cousins, Ned and Nat White, though collegians, and of
what Tavia called “the harum-scarum type” like herself, were clean,
upright fellows and possessed no low ideas or tastes. It seemed to
Dorothy for a man to make the acquaintance of a strange girl on the
street and talk with her as Garry Knapp seemed to have done, savored of
a very coarse mind, indeed.

And all the more did she criticise his action because he had taken
advantage of the situation of herself and her friend and “picked
acquaintance” in somewhat the same fashion with them on their entrance
into New York.

He was “that kind.” He went about making the acquaintance of every girl
he saw who would give him a chance to speak to her! That is the way it
looked to Dorothy in her present mood.

She gave Garry Knapp credit for being a Westerner and being not as
conservative as Eastern folk. She knew that people in the West were
freer and more easily to become acquainted with than Eastern people.
But she had set that girl down as a common flirt, and she believed
no gentleman would so easily and naturally fall into conversation
with her as Garry Knapp had, unless he were quite used to making such
acquaintances.

It shamed Dorothy, too, to think that the young man should go straight
from her and Tavia to the girl.

That was the thought that made the keenest wound in Dorothy Dale’s mind.

They shopped “furiously,” as Tavia declared, all the morning, only
resting while they ate a bite of luncheon in one of the big stores, and
then went at it again immediately afterward.

“The boys talk about ‘bucking the line’ about this time of
year—football slang, you know,” sighed Tavia; “but believe me! this is
some ‘bucking.’ I never shopped so fast and furiously in all my life.
Dorothy, you actually act as though you wanted to get it all over with
and go home. And we can stay a week if we like. We’re having no fun at
all.”

Dorothy would not answer. She wished they could go home. It seemed to
her as though New York City was not big enough in which to hide away
from Garry Knapp.

They could not secure seats—not those they wanted—for the play Ned and
Nat had told them to see, for that evening; and Tavia insisted upon
going back to the hotel.

“I am done up,” she announced. “I am a dish-rag. I am a disgrace to
look at, and I feel that if I do not follow Lovely Lucy Larriper’s
advice and relax, I may be injured for life. Come, Dorothy, we must go
back to our rooms and lie down, or I shall lie right down here in the
gutter and do my relaxing.”

They returned to the hotel, and Dorothy almost ran through the lobby
to the elevator, she was so afraid that Garry Knapp would be waiting
there. She felt that he would be watching for them. The note he had
written her that morning proved that he was determined to keep up their
acquaintanceship if she gave him the slightest opening.

“And I’ll never let him—never!” she told herself angrily.

“Goodness! how can you hurry so?” plaintively panted Tavia, as she sank
into the cushioned seat in the elevator.

All the time they were resting, Dorothy was thinking of Garry. He would
surely be downstairs at dinner time, waiting his chance to approach
them. She had a dozen ideas as to how she would treat him—and none of
them seemed good ideas.

She was tempted to write him a note in answer to the line he had left
with the clerk for her that morning, warning him never to speak to her
friend or herself again. But then, how could she do so bold a thing?

Tavia got up at last and began to move about her room. “Aren’t you
going to get up ever again, Doro?” she asked. “Doesn’t the inner man
call for sustenance? Or even the outer man? I’m just crazy to see Garry
Knapp and ask him how he came by my bag.”

“Oh, Tavia! I wish you wouldn’t,” groaned Dorothy.

“Wish I wouldn’t what?” demanded her friend, coming to her open door
with a hairbrush in her hand and wielding it calmly.

Dorothy “bit off” what she had intended to say. She could not bring
herself to tell Tavia all that was in her mind. She fell back upon that
“white fib” that seems first in the feminine mind when trouble portends:

“I’ve _such_ a headache!”

“Poor dear!” cried Tavia. “I should think you had. You ate scarcely any
luncheon——”

“Oh, don’t mention eating!” begged Dorothy, and she really found she
did have a slight headache now that she had said so.

“Don’t you want your dinner?” cried Tavia, in horror.

“No, dear. Just let me lie here. You—you go down and eat. Perhaps I’ll
have something light by and by.”

“That’s what the Esquimau said when he ate the candle,” said Tavia, but
without smiling. It was a habit with Tavia, this saying something funny
when she was thinking of something entirely foreign to her remark.

“You’re not going to be sick, are you, Doro?” she finally asked.

“No, indeed, my dear.”

“Well! you’ve acted funny all day.”

“I don’t feel a bit funny,” groaned Dorothy. “Don’t make me talk—now.”

So Tavia, who could be sympathetic when she chose, stole away and
dressed quietly. She looked in at Dorothy when she was ready to go
downstairs, and as her chum lay with her eyes closed Tavia went out
without speaking.

Garry Knapp was fidgeting in the lobby when Tavia stepped out of the
car. His eye brightened—then clouded again. Tavia noticed it, and her
conclusion bore out the thought she had evolved about Dorothy upstairs.

“Oh, Mr. Knapp!” she cried, meeting him with both hands outstretched.
“Tell me! How did you find my bag?”

And Garry Knapp was impolite enough to put her question aside for the
moment while he asked:

“Where’s Miss Dale?”

Two hours later Tavia returned to her chum. Garry walked out of the
hotel with his face heavily clouded.

“Just my luck! She’s a regular millionaire. Her folks have got more
money than I’ll ever even _see_ if I beat out old Methuselah in age!
And Miss Tavia says Miss Dale will be rich in her own right. Ah, Garry,
old man! There’s a blank wall ahead of you. You can’t jump it in a
hurry. You haven’t got the _spring_. And this little mess of money I
may get for the old ranch won’t put me in Miss Dorothy Dale’s class—not
by a million miles!”

He walked away from the hotel, chewing on this thought as though it had
a very, very bitter taste.




CHAPTER VIII

AND STILL DOROTHY IS NOT HAPPY


“But what did he _say_?” demanded Dorothy, almost wildly, sitting up in
bed at Tavia’s first announcement. “I want to know what he _said_!”

“We-ell, maybe he didn’t tell the truth,” said Tavia, slowly.

“We’ll find out about that later,” Dorothy declared. “Go on.”

“How?”

“Why, of course we must hunt up these girls and give them something for
returning your bag.”

“Oh! I s’pose so,” Tavia said. “Though I guess the little one, Number
Forty-seven, wanted to keep it.”

“Now, tell me _all_” breathed Dorothy, her eyes shining. “All he
said—every word.”

“Goodness! I guess your headache is better, Doro Dale,” laughed Tavia,
sitting down on the edge of the bed. Dorothy said not a word, but her
“listening face” put Tavia on her mettle.

“Well, the very first thing he said,” she told her chum, her eyes
dancing, “when I ran up to him and thanked him for getting my bag, was:

“‘Where’s Miss Dale?’

“What do you know about _that_?” cried Tavia, in high glee. “You
have made a deep, wide, long, and high impression—a four-dimension
impression—on that young man from the ‘wild and woolly.’ Oh yes, you
have!”

The faint blush that washed up into Dorothy Dale’s face like a gentle
wave on the sea-strand made her look “ravishing,” so Tavia declared.
She simply had to stop to hug her friend before she went on. Dorothy
recovered her serenity almost at once.

“Don’t tease, dear,” she said. “Go on with your story.”

“You see, the little cash-girl—or ‘check’, as they call them—picked
the bag up off the floor and hid it under her apron. Then she was
scared—especially when Mr. Schuman chanced to come upon us all as we
were quarreling. I suppose Mr. Schuman seems like a god to little
Forty-seven.

“Anyhow,” Tavia pursued, “whether the child meant to steal the bag
or not at first, she was afraid to say anything about it then. Her
sister—this girl who came to the hotel—works in the house furnishing
department. Before night Forty-seven told her sister. She had heard Mr.
Knapp’s name, and from the shipping clerk the big girl obtained the
name of the hotel at which Mr. Knapp was staying. Do you see?”

“Yes,” breathed Dorothy. “Go on, dear.”

“Why, the girl just came here and asked for Mr. Knapp and found he was
out. She didn’t know any better than to linger about outside and wait
for him to appear—like Mary’s little lamb, you know! Little Forty-seven
had told her sister what Mr. Knapp looked like, of course.”

“Of course!” cried Dorothy, agreeing again, but in such a tone that
Tavia frankly stared at her.

“I do wish I knew just what is the matter with you to-day, Doro,” she
murmured.

“And the rest of it?” demanded Dorothy, her eyes shining and her cheeks
still pink.

“Why, when little Forty-seven’s sister saw us with Mr. Knapp she jumped
to the correct conclusion that we were the girls who had lost the
money, and so she was afraid to speak right out before us——”

“Why?”

“Well, Dorothy,” said Tavia, with considerable gravity for her, “I
guess because of the old and well-established reason.”

“What’s that?”

“Because a man will be kinder to a girl in trouble than other girls
will—ordinarily, I mean.”

“Oh, Tavia!”

“Suppose it had been that Mrs. Halbridge who had really lost her bag,”
Tavia went on to say. “If this girl had tried to return it, she and
little Forty-seven both would have lost their jobs. Perhaps the police
would have been called in. Do you see? I expect the big girl read
kindness in Mr. Knapp’s face——”

Dorothy suddenly threw both arms about Tavia, and hugged her tightly.
“Oh, you _dear_!” she cried; but she would not explain what she meant
by this sudden burst of affection.

“Go on!” was her repeated demand.

“You are insatiable, my dear,” laughed Tavia. “Well, there isn’t much
more ‘go on’ to it. The girl spoke to him when he passed her on the
street and quickly told him all the story. Of course, he promised that
nothing should happen to either of them. They are honest girls—the
older one at least. And the temptation came so suddenly to little
Forty-seven, whose wages are so pitiably small.”

“I know,” said Dorothy, gently. “You remember, we learned something
about it when little Miette De Pleau told us how she worked as
cash-girl here years ago.”

“Of course I remember,” Tavia said. “Well, that’s all, I guess. Oh no!
I asked Mr. Knapp if he didn’t notice the big girl staring at us as we
got to the hotel door last night. And what do you suppose he said?”

“I don’t know,” and Dorothy was still smiling happily.

“Why, he said he didn’t. ‘You see,’ he added, in that funny way of his,
‘I expect my eyes were elsewhere’; and he wasn’t complimenting me,
either,” added Tavia, rolling her big eyes. “Whom do you suppose he
could have meant he was looking at, Doro?”

Her friend ignored the question, but hopped out of bed.

“What are you going to do?” asked Tavia, in wonder.

“Dress.”

“But it is nine o’clock! Almost bedtime.”

“_Bedtime?_” demanded Dorothy. “And in the city? Why, Tavia! you amaze
me, child!”

“But you’re not going out?” cried her friend.

“Do you realize I haven’t had a bite of dinner?” demanded the bold
Dorothy. “I think you are very selfish.”

“Well, anyway,” snapped Tavia, suddenly showing her claws—and who does
not once in a while?—“_he’s_ gone out for a long walk and he expects to
finish his business to-morrow and go home.”

“Oh!” gasped Dorothy.

She sat on the edge of her bed with her first stocking in her hand.
Tavia had gone back into her own room. Had she been present she must
have noticed all the delight fading out of Dorothy Dale’s countenance.
Finally, the latter tossed away the stocking, and crept back into bed.

“I—I guess I’m too lazy to dress after all, dear,” she said, in a still
little voice. “And you are tired, too, Tavia. The telephone has been
fixed; just call down, will you, and ask them to send me up some tea
and toast?”




CHAPTER IX

THEY SEE GARRY’S BACK


The following day Dorothy was her old cheerful self—or so Tavia
thought. They did not shop with such abandon, but took matters more
easily. And they returned to the hotel for luncheon and for rest.

“But he isn’t here!” Tavia exclaimed, when they entered the big
restaurant for the midday meal. “And I remember now he said
last evening that he would probably be down town almost all day
to-day—trying to sell that property of his, you know.”

“Who, dear?” asked Dorothy, with a far-away look on her face.

“Peleg Swift!” snapped Tavia. “You know very well of whom I am talking.
Garry Owen!” and she hummed a few bars of the old, old march.

Garry certainly was not present; but Dorothy still smiled. They went
out again and purchased a few more things. When they returned late in
the afternoon the young Westerner was visible in the lobby the moment
the girls came through the doorway.

But he was busy. He did not even see them. He was talking with two
men of pronounced New York business type who might have been brokers
or Wall Street men. All three sat on a lounge near the elevators, and
Dorothy heard one of the strangers say crisply, as she and Tavia waited
for a car:

“That’s our top price, I think, Mr. Knapp. And, of course, we cannot
pay you any money until I have seen the land, save the hundred for the
option. I shall be out in a fortnight, I believe. It must hang fire
until then, even at this price.”

“Well, Mr. Stiffbold—it’s a bet!” Garry said, and Dorothy could imagine
the secret sigh he breathed. Evidently, he was not getting the price
for the wornout ranch that he had hoped.

The two girls went up in the elevator and later made their dinner
toilet. To-night Dorothy was the one who took the most pains in her
primping; but Tavia said never a word. Nevertheless, she “looked
volumes.”

They were downstairs again not much later than half past six. Not a
sign of Garry Knapp either in the lobby or in the dining-room. The
girls ate their dinner slowly and “lived in hopes,” as Tavia expressed
it.

Both were frankly hoping Garry would appear. Tavia was grateful to him
for the part he had taken in the recovery of her bag; and, too, he was
“nice.” Dorothy felt that she had misjudged the young Westerner, and
she was fired with a desire to be particularly pleasant to him so as to
salve over her secret compunctions of conscience.

“‘He cometh not, she said,’” Tavia complained. “What’s the matter with
the boy, anyway? Can he be eating in the cafê with those two men?”

“Oh, Tavia!” suddenly exclaimed Dorothy. “You said he was going home
to-day.”

“Oh—ah—yes. He did say he expected to get out for the West again some
time to-day——”

“Maybe he’s go-o-one!” and Dorothy’s phrase was almost a wail.

“Goodness! Never! Without looking us up and saying a word of good-bye?”

Dorothy got up with determination. “I am going to find out,” she said.
“I feel that I would like to see Mr. Knapp again.”

“Well! if _I_ said a thing like that about a young man——”

However, Tavia let the remark trail off into silence and followed her
chum. As they came out of the dining-room the broad shoulders and
broad-brimmed hat of Garry Knapp were going through the street door!

“Oh!” gasped Dorothy.

“He’s going!” added Tavia, stricken quite as motionless.

“Going——”

“Gone!” ended Tavia, sepulchrally. “It’s all off, Dorothy. Garry Knapp,
of Desert City, has departed.”

“Oh, we must stop him—speak to him——”

Dorothy started for the door and Tavia, nothing loath, followed at a
sharp pace. Just as they came out into the open street a car stopped
before the hotel door and Garry Knapp, “bag and baggage” stepped
aboard. He did not even look back!

As the girls returned to the hotel lobby the two men with whom they
had seen Garry Knapp earlier in the evening, were passing out. They
lingered while one of the men lit his cigar, and Dorothy heard the
second man speaking.

“I could have paid him spot cash for the land right here and been sure
of a bargain, Lightly. I know just where it is and all about it. But
it will do no harm to let the thing hang fire till I get out there.
Perhaps, if I’m not too eager, I can get him to knock off a few dollars
per acre. The boy wants to sell—that’s sure.”

“Uh-huh!” grunted the one with the cigar. “It’ll make a tidy piece of
wheat land without doubt, Stiffbold. You go for it!”

They passed out then and the girl who had listened followed her friend
slowly to the elevator, deep in thought. She said not a word until they
were upstairs again. Perhaps her heart was really too full just then
for utterance.

As they entered Dorothy’s room the girls saw that the maid had been in
during their absence at dinner. There was a long box, unmistakably a
florist’s box, on the table.

“Oh, see what’s here!” cried Tavia, springing forward.

The card on the box read: “Miss Dale.”

“For you!” cried Tavia. “What meaneth it, fair Lady Dorothy? Hast thou
made a conquest already? Some sweet swain——”

“I don’t believe you know what a ‘sweet swain’ is,” laughed Dorothy.

Her fingers trembled as she untied the purple cord. Tavia asked, with
increased curiosity:

“Who can they be from, Doro? Flowers, of course!”

Dorothy said nothing in reply; but in her heart she knew—she knew!
The cord was untied at last, the tissue paper, all fragrant and dewy,
lifted.

“Why!” said Tavia, rather in disappointment and doubt. “Not roses—or
chrysanthemums—or—or——”

“Or anything foolish!” finished Dorothy, firmly.

She lifted from their bed of damp moss a bouquet of the simplest
old-fashioned flowers; mignonette, and several long-stemmed, dewy
violets and buttercups, pansies, forget-me-nots——

“He must have been robbing all the old-fashioned gardens around New
York,” said Tavia. “But that’s a lovely ribbon—and yards of it.”

Dorothy did not speak at first. The cost of the gift meant nothing to
her. Yet she knew that the monetary value of such a bouquet in New York
must be far above what was ordinarily paid for roses and the like.

A note was nestling in the stems. She opened it and read:

  “Dear Miss Dale:

 “Was mighty sorry to hear you are still in retirement. Your friend
 said last evening that you were quite done-up. Now I am forced to
 leave in a hurry without seeing you. Sent bellhop up to your room and
 he reports ‘no answer.’

 “But, without seeming too bold, will hope that we shall meet again—and
 that these few flowers will be a reminder of

  “Faithfully and regretfully yours,
  “G. KNAPP.”




CHAPTER X

“HEART DISEASE”


After one passes the railroad station at The Beeches, and before
reaching the town limits of North Birchland, the traveler sees a gray
road following closely the railway tracks, sometimes divided from them
by rail-fences, sometimes by a ditch, and sometimes the railway roadbed
is high on a bank overlooking the highway.

For several miles the road grades downward—not a sharp grade, but a
steady one—and so does the railroad. At the foot of the slope the
highway keeps straight on over a bridge that spans the deep and
boisterous creek; but a fork of the road turns abruptly and crosses the
railroad at grade.

There is no flagman at this grade crossing, nor is there a drop-gate.
Just a “Stop, Look, Listen” sign—two words of which are unnecessary, as
some philosopher has pointed out. There had been some serious accidents
at this crossing; but thus far the railroad company had found it
cheaper to pay court damages than to pay a flagman and the upkeep of a
proper gate on both sides of its right-of-way.

When they came in sight of the down-hill part of the road Dorothy Dale
and Tavia Travers knew it was time to begin to put on their wraps and
take down their bags. The North Birchland station would soon be in
sight.

It was Dorothy who first stood up to reach for her bag. As she did so
she glanced through the broad window, out upon the highway.

“Oh, Tavia!” she gasped.

“What’s the matter, dear? You don’t see Garry Knapp, do you? Maybe his
buying those flowers—that ‘parting blessing’—‘busted’ him and he’s got
to walk home clear to Desert City.”

“Don’t be a goose!” half laughed Dorothy. “Look out. See if you see
what I see.”

“Why, Doro! it’s Joe and Roger I do believe!”

“I was sure it was,” returned her friend. “What can those boys be doing
now?”

“Well, what they are doing seems plain enough,” said Tavia. “What they
are going to do is the moot question, my dear. You never know what a
boy will do next, or what he did last; you’re only sure of what he is
doing just now.”

What the young brothers of Dorothy Dale were doing at that moment was
easily explained. They were riding down the long slope of the gray
road toward North Birchland, racing with the train Dorothy and Tavia
were on. The vehicle upon which the boys were riding was a nondescript
thing composed of a long plank, four wheels, a steering arrangement of
more or less dependence, and a soap box.

In the soap box was a bag, and unless the girls were greatly mistaken
Joe and Roger Dale had been nutting over toward The Beeches, and the
bag was filled with hickory nuts and chestnuts in their shells and
burrs.

Roger, who was the youngest, and whom Dorothy continued to look upon as
a baby, occupied the box with the nuts. Joe, who was fifteen, straddled
the plank with his feet on the rests and steered. The boys’ vehicle was
going like the wind. It looked as though a small stone in the road,
or an uncertain jerk by Joe on the steering lines, would throw the
contraption on which they rode sideways and dump out the boys.

“Enough to give one heart disease,” said Tavia. “I declare! small
brothers are a nuisance. When I’m at home in Dalton I have to wear
blinders so as not to see _my_ kid brothers at their antics.”

“If something should happen, Tavia!” murmured Dorothy.

“Something is always happening. But not often is it something bad,”
said Tavia, coolly. “‘There’s a swate little cherub that sits up
aloft, and kapes out an eye for poor Jack,’ as the Irish tar says.
And there is a similar cherub looking out for small boys—or a special
providence.”

The train was now high on the embankment over the roadway. The two boys
sliding down the hill looked very small, indeed, below the car windows.

“Suppose a wagon should start up the hill,” murmured Dorothy.

“There’s none in sight. I never saw the road more deserted—oh, Doro!”

Tavia uttered this cry before she thought. She had looked far ahead to
the foot of the hill and had seen something that her friend had not yet
observed.

“What is it?” gasped Dorothy, whose gaze was still fixed upon her
brothers.

“My dear! The bridge!”

The words burst from Tavia involuntarily. She could not keep them in.

At the foot of the hill the road forked as has before been shown. To
the left it crossed the railroad tracks at grade. Of course, these
reckless boys had not intended to try for the crossing ahead of the
train. But the main road, which kept straight on beside the tracks,
crossed the creek on a wooden bridge. Tavia, looking ahead, saw that
the bridge boards were up and there was a rough fence built across the
main road!

“They’ll be killed!” screamed Dorothy Dale, and sank back into her
chair.

The train was now pitching down the grade. It was still a mile to the
foot of the slope where railroad and highway were on a level again. The
boys in their little “scooter” were traveling faster than the train
itself, for the brakes had been applied when the descent was begun.

The boys and their vehicle, surrounded by a little halo of dust, were
now far ahead of the chair car in which their sister and Tavia rode.
The girls, clinging to each other, craned their necks to see ahead.
There were not many other passengers in the car and nobody chanced to
notice the horror-stricken girls.

It was a race between the boys and the train, and the boys would never
be able to halt their vehicle on the level at the bottom of the hill
before crashing into the fence that guarded the open bridge.

Were the barrier not there, the little cart would dart over the edge
of the masonry wall of the bridge and all be dashed into the deep and
rock-strewn bed of the creek.

There was but one escape for the boys in any event. Perhaps their
vehicle could be guided to the left, into the branch road and so across
the railroad track. But if Joe undertook that would not the train be
upon them?

“Heart disease,” indeed! It seemed to Dorothy Dale as though her own
heart pounded so that she could no longer breathe. Her eyes strained
to see the imperiled boys down in the road.

The “scooter” ran faster and faster or was the train itself slowing
down?

“For sure and certain they are beating us!” murmured Tavia.

She could appreciate the sporting chance in the race; but to Dorothy
there loomed up nothing but the peril facing her brothers.

The railroad tracks pitched rather sharply here. It was quite a descent
into the valley where North Birchland lay. When the engineers of the
passenger trains had any time to make up running west they could always
regain schedule on this slope.

Dorothy knew this. She realized that the engineer, watching the track
ahead and not the roadway where the boys were, might be tempted to
release his brakes when half way down the slope and increase his speed.

If he did so and the boys, Joe and Roger, turned to cross the rails,
the train must crash into the “scooter.”




CHAPTER XI

A BOLD THING TO DO!


The threatening peril—which looked so sure to Dorothy Dale if to nobody
else—inspired her to act, not to remain stunned and helpless. She
jerked her hand from Tavia’s clutch and sprang to her feet. She had
been reaching for her bag on first observing the boys coasting down
the long hill beside the railroad tracks; and her umbrella was in the
rack, too. She seized this. Its handle was a shepherd’s crook. Reaching
with it, and without a word to Tavia, she hooked the handle into the
emergency cord that ran overhead the length of the car, and pulled down
sharply. Instantly there was a shriek from the engine whistle and the
brakes were sharply applied.

The brake shoes so suddenly applied to the wheels on this downgrade
did much harm to the wheels themselves. Little cared Dorothy for this
well-known fact. If every wheel under the train had to go to the repair
shop she would have made this bold attempt to stop the train or retard
its speed, so that Joe and Roger could cross the tracks ahead of it.

Glancing through the window she saw the boys’ “scooter” dart swiftly
and safely into the fork-road and disappear some rods ahead of the
pilot of the engine. The boys were across before the brakeman and the
Pullman conductor opened the car door and rushed in.

“Who pulled that emergency cord? Anybody here?” shouted the conductor.

“Oh! don’t tell him!” breathed Tavia.

But her friend, if physically afraid, was never a moral coward. She
looked straight into the angry conductor’s face and said:

“I did.”

“What for?” he demanded.

“To stop the train. My brothers were in danger——”

“Say! What’s that?” demanded the Pullman conductor of Tavia. “Where are
her brothers?”

The brakeman, who had long run over this road, pulled at the
conductor’s sleeve.

“That’s Major Dale’s girl,” he whispered, and Tavia heard if Dorothy
did not.

“Who’s Major Dale?” asked the conductor, in a low voice, turning aside.
“Somebody on the road?”

“Owns stock in it all right. And a bigwig around North Birchland. Go
easy, I say,” advised the brakeman, immediately turning back to the
door.

The train, meanwhile, had started on again, for undoubtedly the other
conductor had given the engineer the signal to go ahead. Through the
window across the car Dorothy could see out upon the road beyond the
tracks. There was the little “scooter” at a standstill. Joe and Roger
were standing up and waving their caps at the train.

“They’re safe!” Dorothy cried to Tavia.

“I see they are; but you’re not—yet,” returned her chum.

“Who’s that is safe?” asked the conductor, still in doubt.

“My brothers—there,” answered Dorothy, pointing. “They had to cross in
front of the train because the bridge is open. They couldn’t stop at
the bottom of the hill.”

The Pullman conductor understood at last. “But I’ll have to make a
report of this, Miss Dale,” he said, complainingly.

Dorothy had seated herself and she was very pale. The fright for her at
least had been serious.

“Make a dozen reports if you like—help yourself,” said Tavia, tartly,
bending over her friend. “If there is anything to pay send the bill to
Major Dale.”

The conductor grumbled something and went out, notebook in hand. In
a few moments the train came to a standstill at the North Birchland
station. The girls had to bestir themselves to get out in season, and
that helped rouse Dorothy.

“Those rascals!” said Tavia, once they were on the platform. “Joe and
Roger should be spanked.”

“I’m afraid Joe is too big for that,” sighed Dorothy. “And who would
spank them? It is something they didn’t get when they were little——”

“And see the result!”

“Your brothers were whipped sufficiently, I am sure,” Dorothy said,
smiling at length. “They are not one whit better than Joe and Roger.”

“Dear me! that’s so,” admitted Tavia. “But just the same, I belieev in
whippings—for boys.”

“And no whippings for girls?”

“I should say not!” cried Tavia. “There never _was_ a girl who deserved
corporal punishment.”

“Not even Nita Brandt?” suggested Dorothy, naming a girl who had ever
been a thorn in the flesh for Tavia during their days at Glenwood.

“Well—perhaps _she_. But Nita’s about the only one, I guess.”

The next moment Tavia started to run down the long platform, dropping
her bag and screaming:

“Jennie Hapgood! Jennie Jane Jemina Jerusha Happiness—_good_! How ever
came you here?”

Dorothy was excited, too, when she saw the pretty girl whom Tavia
greeted with such ebullition; but she looked beyond Jennie Hapgood, the
expected guest from Pennsylvania.

There was the boys’ new car beside the station platform and Ned was
under the steering-wheel while Nat was just getting out after Jennie.
Of course, the two girls just back from New York were warmly kissed by
Jennie. Then Nat came next and before Tavia realized what was being
done to her, she was soundly kissed, too!

“Bold, bad thing!” she cried, raising a gloved hand toward the laughing
Nat. But it never reached him. Then Dorothy had to submit—as she always
did—to the bearlike hugs of both her cousins, for Ned quickly joined
them on the platform. Tavia escaped Ned—if, indeed, he had intended to
follow his brother’s example.

“What is the use of having a pretty cousin,” the White boys always
said, “if we can’t kiss her? Keeps our hands in, you know. And if she
has pretty friends, why shouldn’t we kiss them, too?”

“Did you boys kiss Jennie when she arrived this morning?” Tavia
demanded, repairing the ruffled hair that had fallen over her ears.

“Certainly!” declared Nat, boldly. “Both of us.”

“They never!” cried Jennie, turning very red. “You know I wouldn’t let
these boys kiss me.”

“I bet a boy kissed you the last thing before you started up here from
home,” teased Nat.

“I _never_ let boys kiss me,” repeated Jennie.

“Oh, no!” drawled Ned, joining in with his brother. “How about Jack?”

“Oh, well, _Jack_!”

“Jack isn’t a boy, I suppose?” hooted Nat. “I guess that girl he’s
going to marry about Christmas time thinks he’s a pretty nice boy.”

“But he’s only my brother,” announced Jennie Hapgood, tossing her head.

“Is he really?” cried Tavia, clasping her hands eagerly.

“Is he really my brother?” demanded Jennie, in amazement. “Why, you
_know_ he is, Tavia Travers!”

“Oh, no! I mean are they going to be married at Christmas?”

“Yes. That is the plan now. And you’ve all got to come to Sunnyside to
the wedding. Nothing less would suit Jack—or father and mother,” Jennie
said happily. “So prepare accordingly.”

Nat raced with Tavia for the bag she had dropped. He got it and clung
to it all the way in the car to The Cedars, threatening to open it and
examine its contents.

“For I know very well that Tavia’s got oodles of new face powder and
rouge, and a rabbit’s foot to put it on with—or else a kalsomine
brush,” Nat declared. “Joe and Roger want to paint the old pigeon
house, anyway, and this stuff Tavia’s got in here will be just the
thing.”

In fact, the two big fellows were so glad to see their cousin and Tavia
again that they teased worse than ever. A queer way to show their
affection, but a boy’s way, after all. And, of course, everybody else
at the Cedars was delighted to greet Dorothy and Tavia. It was some
time before the returned travelers could run upstairs to change their
dresses for dinner. Jennie had gone into her room to change, too, and
Tavia came to Dorothy’s open door.

“Oh, that letter!” she exclaimed, seeing Dorothy standing very gravely
with a letter in her hand. “Haven’t you sent it?”

“You see I haven’t,” Dorothy said seriously.

“But why not?”

“It seems such a bold thing to do,” confessed her friend. “We know so
little about him. And it might encourage him to write in return——”

“Of course it will!” laughed Tavia.

“There! that’s what I mean. It is bold.”

“But, you silly!” cried Tavia. “You only write Mr. Knapp to do him a
good turn. And he did us a good turn—at least, he did _me_ one that I
shall never forget.”

“True,” Dorothy said thoughtfully. “And I have only repeated to him in
this note what I heard that man, Stiffbold, say about the purchase of
Mr. Knapp’s ranch.”

“Oh, help the poor fellow out. Those men will rob him,” Tavia advised.
“Why didn’t you send it at once, when you had written it?”

“I—I thought I’d wait and consult Aunt Winnie,” stammered Dorothy.

“Then consult her.”

“But—but _now_ I don’t want to.”

Tavia looked at her with certainty in her own gaze. “I know what is the
matter with you,” she said.

Dorothy flushed quickly and Tavia shook her head, saying nothing more.
But when the girls went downstairs to dinner, Tavia saw Dorothy drop
the stamped letter addressed to “Mr. Garford Knapp, Desert City,” into
the mail bag in the hall.




CHAPTER XII

UNCERTAINTIES


Dorothy had no time before dinner, but after that meal she seized upon
her brothers, Joe and Roger, and led them aside. The boys thought she
had something nice for them, brought from New York. They very quickly
found out their mistake.

“I want to know what you boys mean by taking such risks as you did
this afternoon?” she demanded, when out of hearing of the rest of the
family. She would not have her aunt or the major troubled by knowing of
the escapade.

“You, especially, Joe,” she went on, with an accusing finger raised.
“You both might have been killed. _Then_ how would you have felt?”

“Er—dead, I guess, Sister,” admitted Roger, for Joe was silent.

“Didn’t you know the road was closed because of repairs on the bridge?”
she asked the older boy sternly.

“No-o. We forgot. We didn’t go over to the nutting woods that way. Say!
who told you?” blurted out Joe.

“Who told me what?”

“About our race with the train. Cricky, but it was great!”

“It was fine!” Roger added his testimony with equal enthusiasm.

“I saw you,” said Dorothy, her face paling as she remembered her fright
in the train. “I—I thought I should faint I was so frightened.”

“Say! isn’t that just like a girl?” grumbled Joe; but he looked at his
sister with some compunction, for he and Roger almost worshipped her.
Only, of course, they were boys and the usual boy cannot understand the
fluttering terror in the usual girl’s heart when danger threatens. Not
that Dorothy was a weakling in any way; she could be courageous for
herself. But her fears were always excited when those she loved were in
peril.

“Why, we were only having fun, Sister,” Roger blurted out. Being
considerably younger than his brother he was quicker to be moved by
Dorothy’s expression of feeling.

“Fun!” she gasped.

“Yes,” Joe said sturdily. “It was a great race. And you and Tavia were
in that train? We didn’t have an idea, did we, Roger?”

“Nop,” said his small brother thoughtlessly. “If we had we wouldn’t
have raced _that_ train.”

“Now, I want to tell you something!” exclaimed their sister, with
a sharper note in her voice. “You’re not to race _any_ train!
Understand, boys? Suppose that engine had struck you as you crossed the
tracks?”

“Oh, it wouldn’t,” Joe said stoutly. “I know the engineer. He’s a
friend of mine. He saw I had the ‘right-of-way,’ as they call it. I’d
beat him down the hill; so he held up the train.”

“Yes—he held up the train,” said Dorothy with a queer little laugh. “He
put on brakes because I pulled the emergency cord. You boys would never
have crossed ahead of that train if I hadn’t done so.”

“Oh, Dorothy!” gasped Joe.

“Oh, Sister!” cried Roger.

“Tavia and I almost had heart disease,” the young woman told them
seriously. “Engineers do not watch boys on country roads when they are
guiding a great express train. It is a serious matter to control a
train and to have the destinies of the passengers in one’s hands. The
engineer is looking ahead—watching the rails and the roadbed. Remember
that, boys.”

“I’d like to be an engineer!” sighed Roger, his eyes big with longing.

“Pooh!” Joe said. “It’s more fun to drive an automobile—like this new
one Ned and Nat have. You don’t have to stay on the tracks, you know.”

“Nobody but cautious people can learn to drive automobiles,” said
Dorothy, seriously.

“I’m big enough,” stated Joe, with conviction.

“You may be. But you’re not careful enough,” his sister told him.
“Your racing our train to-day showed that. Now, I won’t tell father or
auntie, for I do not wish to worry them. But you must promise me not
to ride down that hill in your little wagon any more or enter into any
such reckless sports.”

“Oh, we won’t, of course, if you say not, Dorothy,” sniffed Joe. “But
you must remember we’re boys and boys have got to take chances. Even
father says that.”

“Yes. When you are grown. You may be placed in situations where your
courage will be tested. But, goodness me!” finished Dorothy Dale.
“Don’t scare us to death, boys. And now see what I bought you in New
York.”

However, her lecture made some impression upon the boys’ minds despite
their excitement over the presents which were now brought to light.
Full football outfits for both the present was, and Joe and Roger were
delighted. They wanted to put them on and go out at once with the ball
to “pass signals,” dark as it had become.

However, they compromised on this at Dorothy’s advice, by taking the
suits, pads and guards off to their room and trying them on, coming
downstairs later to “show off” before the folks in the drawing-room.

Major Dale was one of those men who never grow old in their hearts.
Crippled as he was—both by his wounded leg and by rheumatism—he
delighted to see the young life about him, and took as much interest in
the affairs of the young people as ever he had.

Aunt Winnie looked a very interesting invalid, indeed, with her lame
ankle, and rested on the couch. The big boys and Dorothy and her
friends always made much of Aunt Winnie in any case; now that she
was “laid up in drydock,” as Nat expressed it, they were especially
attentive.

Jennie and Tavia, with the two older boys, spent most of the evening
hovering about the lady’s couch, or at the piano where they played
and sang college songs and old Briarwood songs, till eleven o’clock.
Dorothy sat between her father and Aunt Winnie and talked to them.

“What makes you so sober, Captain?” the major asked during the evening.
He had always called her “his little captain” and sometimes seemed
really to forget that she had any other name.

“I’m all right, Major,” she returned brightly. “I have to think,
sometimes, you know.”

“What is the serious problem now, Dorothy?” asked her aunt, with a
little laugh. “Did you forget to buy something while you were in New
York?”

Dorothy dimpled. “Wait till you see all I did buy,” she responded, “and
you will not ask that question. I have been the most reckless person!”

“Why the serious pucker to your brow, Captain?” went on the major.

“Oh, I have problems. I admit the fact,” Dorothy said, trying to laugh
off their questioning.

“Out with them,” advised her father. “Here are two old folks who have
been solving problems all their lives. Maybe we can help.”

Dorothy laughed again. “Try this one,” she said, with her eyes upon the
quartette “harmonizing” at the piano in dulcet tones, singing “Seeing
Nellie Ho-o-ome.” “Which of our big boys does Tavia like best?”

“Goodness!” exclaimed her aunt, while the major chuckled mellowly.
“Don’t you know, really, Dorothy? I was going to ask _you_. I thought,
of course, Tavia confided everything to you.”

“Sooner or later she may,” the young woman said, still with the
thoughtful air upon her. “But I am as much in the dark about this query
as anybody—perhaps as the boys themselves.”

“Humph!” muttered the major. “Which of them likes _her_ the better?”

“And _that_ I’d like to know,” said his sister earnestly. “There is
another thing, Dorothy: Which of my sons is destined to fall in love
with this very, very pretty girl you have invited here—Jennie Hapgood,
I mean?”

“Oh! they’re all doing it, are they?” grunted the major. “How about our
Dorothy? Where does she come in? No mate for her?”

“I think I shall probably become an old maid,” Dorothy Dale said, but
with a conscious flush that made her aunt watch her in a puzzled way
for some time.

But the major put back his head and laughed delightedly. “No more
chance of your remaining a spinster—when you are really old enough to
be called one—than there is of my leading troops into battle again,” he
declared with warmth. “Hey, Sister?”

“Our Dorothy is too attractive I am sure to escape the chance to marry,
at least,” said Aunt Winnie, still watching her niece with clouded
gaze. “I wonder whence the right knight will come riding—from north, or
south, east or west?”

And in spite of herself Dorothy flushed up again at her aunt’s last
word.

It was a question oft-repeated in Dorothy Dale’s mind during the
following days, this one regarding the state of mind of her two cousins
and her two school friends.

It had always seemed to Dorothy, whenever she had thought of it, that
one of her cousins, either Ned or Nat, must in the end be preferred by
Tavia. To think of Tavia’s really settling down to caring for any other
man than Ned or Nat, was quite impossible.

On the other hand, the boys had both shown a great fondness for
the society of Jennie Hapgood when they were all at her home in
Pennsylvania such a short time previous; and now that all four were
together again Dorothy could not guess “which was which” as Tavia
herself would have said.

The boys did not allow Dorothy to be overlooked in any particular. She
was not neglected in the least; yet she did, as the days passed, find
more time to spend with her father and with her Aunt Winnie.

“The little captain is getting more thoughtful. She is steadying down,”
the major told Mrs. White.

“But I wonder _why_?” was that good woman’s puzzled response.

Dorothy Dale sitting by herself with a book that she was not reading
or with fancywork on which she only occasionally took stitches, was
entirely out of her character. She had never been this way before going
to New York, Mrs. White was sure.

There were several uncertainties upon the girl’s mind. One of them
almost came to light when, after ten days, her letter addressed to “Mr.
Garford Knapp, Desert City,” was returned to her by the post-office
department, as instructed in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope.

Her letter, warning Garry Knapp of the advantage the real estate men
wished to take of him, would, after all, do him no good. He would never
know that she had written. Perhaps her path and Garry Knapp’s would
never cross again.




CHAPTER XIII

DOROTHY MAKES A DISCOVERY


The boys had a dog—Old Brindle he was called—and he had just enough
bull in him to make him a faithful friend and a good watchdog. But,
of course, he was of little use in the woods, and Joe and Roger were
always begging for a hunting dog.

“We’ve got these now—pump-rifles,” Roger said eagerly to Dorothy, whom
he thought able to accomplish any wonder she might undertake. “They
shoot fifty shots. Think of it, Sister! That’s a lot. And father taught
us how to use ’em long ago, of course. Just think! I could stand right
up and shoot down fifty people—just like that.”

“Oh, Roger!” gasped Dorothy. “Don’t say such awful things.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t, you know; but I could,” the boy said confidently. “Now
the law is off rabbits and partridges and quail. Joe and I saw lots of
’em when we went after those nuts the other day. If we’d had our guns
along maybe we might have shot some.”

“The poor little birds and the cunning little rabbits,” said Dorothy
with a sigh.

“Oh! they’re not like our pigeons and our tame rabbits. These are real
_wild_. If some of ’em weren’t shot they’d breed an’ breed till there
were so many that maybe it wouldn’t be safe to go out into the woods,”
declared the small boy, whose imagination never needed spurring.

Joe came up on the porch in time to hear this last. He chuckled, but
Dorothy was saying to Roger:

“How foolish, dear! Who ever heard of a rabbit being cross?”

“Just the same I guess you’ve heard of being as ‘mad as a March hare,’
haven’t you?” demanded Joe, his eyes twinkling. “And we _do_ want a
bird dog, Sis, to jump a rabbit for us, or to flush a flock of quail.”

“Those dear little bobwhites,” Dorothy sighed again. “Why is it that
boys want always to kill?”

“So’s to eat,” Joe said bluntly. “You know yourself, Dorothy Dale, that
you like partridge on toast and rabbit stew.”

She laughed at them. “I shall go hungry, then, I’m afraid, as far as
you boys are concerned.”

“Of course we can’t get any game if we don’t have a dog. Brindle
couldn’t jump a flea,” growled Joe.

“Say! the big fellows used to have lots more pets than we’ve got,”
complained Roger, referring to Ned and Nat.

“_They_ had dogs,” added Joe. “A whole raft of ’em.”

“Oh, dear me!” exclaimed Dorothy. “I’ll see what can be done. But
another dog!”

“We won’t let him bite you, Sister,” proclaimed Roger. “We only want
him to chase rabbits or to start up the birds so we can shoot ’em.”

Dorothy’s “I’ll see” was, of course, taken by the boys themselves as an
out-and-out agreement to do as the boys desired. They were convinced
that if she gave her mind to it their sister could perform almost any
miracle. At least, she could always bring the rest of the family around
to her way of thinking.

Ned and Nat had opposed the bringing of another dog upon the place.
They were fond of old Brindle; but it must be confessed that the
watchdog was bad tempered where other dogs were concerned.

Brindle seldom went off the place; but if he saw any other dog
trespassing he was very apt to fly at the uninvited visitor. And once
the bull’s teeth were clinched in the strange animal’s neck, it took a
hot iron to make him loose his hold.

There had been several such unfortunate happenings, and Mrs. White had
paid several owners of dogs damages rather than have trouble with the
neighbors. She—and even the major—had strong objections to the coming
of any other dog upon the place as long as Brindle lived.

So the chance for Joe and Roger to have their request granted was small
indeed. Nevertheless, “hope springs eternal,” especially in the breast
of a small boy who wants a dog.

“Maybe we can find somebody that’s got a good, trained dog and will
sell him to us, Roger,” Joe said, as they set forth from the house.

“But I haven’t got much money—only what’s in the bank, and I can’t get
that,” complained Roger.

“You spend all you get for candy,” scoffed Joe. “Now, _I’ve_ got a
whole half dollar left of my month’s spending money. But you can’t buy
much of a dog for fifty cents.”

“Maybe somebody would give us a dog.”

“And folks don’t give away good dogs, either,” grumbled Joe.

“I tell you!” exclaimed Roger, suddenly. “I saw a stray dog yesterday
going down the lane behind our stables.”

“How do you know it was a stray dog?”

“’Cause it _looked_ so. It was sneaking along at the edge of the
hedge and it was tired looking. Then, it had a piece of frayed rope
tied around its neck. Oh, it was a stray dog all right,” declared the
smaller boy eagerly.

“Where’d it go to?”

“Under Mr. Cummerford’s barn,” said Roger. “I bet we could coax it out,
if it’s still there.”

“Not likely,” grunted Joe.

Nevertheless, he started off at once in the direction indicated by his
brother, and the boys were soon at the stable of the neighbor whose
place adjoined The Cedars on that side.

Oddly enough, the dog was still there. He had crawled out and lay
in the sun beside the barn. He was emaciated, his eyes were red and
rolling, and he had a lame front paw. The gray, frayed rope was still
tied to his neck. He was a regular tramp dog.

But he allowed the boys to come close to him without making any attempt
to get away. He eyed them closely, but neither growled nor wagged his
tail. He was a “funny acting” dog, as Roger said.

“I bet he hasn’t had anything to eat for so long and he’s come so far
that he hasn’t got the spunk to wag his tail,” Joe said, as eager as
Roger now. “We’ll take him home and feed him.”

“He’s sure a stray dog, isn’t he, Joe?” cried the smaller boy. “I
haven’t ever seen him before around here, have you?”

“No. And I bet his owner won’t ever come after him,” said Joe, picking
up the end of the rope. “He’s just the kind of a dog we want, too. You
see, he’s a bird dog, or something like that. And when he’s fed up and
rested, I bet he’ll know just how to go after partridges.”

He urged the strange dog to his feet. The beast tottered, and would
have lain down again. Roger, the tender-hearted, said:

“Oh! he’s so hungry. Bet he hasn’t had a thing to eat for days. Maybe
we’ll have to carry him.”

“No. He’s too dirty to carry,” Joe said, looking at the mud caked upon
the long hair of the poor creature and the dust upon him. “We’ll get
him to the stable and feed him; then we’ll hose him off.”

Pulling at the rope he urged the dog on. The animal staggered at first,
but finally grew firmer on his legs. But he did not use the injured
fore paw. He favored that as he hopped along to the White stables.
Neither the coachman nor the chauffeur were about. There was nobody
to observe the dog or advise the boys about the beast. Roger ran to
the kitchen door to beg some scraps for their new possession. The cook
would always give Roger what he asked for. When he came back Joe got
a pan of water for the dog; but the creature backed away from it and
whined—the first sound he had made.

“Say! isn’t that funny?” Joe demanded. “See! he won’t drink. You’d
think he’d be thirsty.”

“Try him with this meat,” Roger said. “Maybe he’s too hungry to drink
at first.”

The dog was undoubtedly starving. Yet he turned his head away from the
broken pieces of food Roger put down before his nose.

Joe had tied the rope to a ring on the side of the stable. The boys
stepped back to see if the dog would eat or drink if they were not so
close to him. Then it was that the creature flew into an awful spasm.
He rose up, his eyes rolling, trembling in every limb, and trying to
break the rope that fastened him to the barn. Froth flew from his
clashing jaws. His teeth were terrible fangs. He fell, rolling over,
snapping at the water-dish. The boys, even Joe, ran screaming from the
spot.

At the moment Dorothy, Tavia and Jennie came walking down the path
toward the stables. They heard the boys scream and all three started
to run. Ned and Nat, nearer the house, saw the girls running and they
likewise bounded down the sloping lawn.

Around the corner of the stables came Joe and Roger, the former almost
dragging the smaller boy by the hand. And, almost at the same instant,
appeared the dog, the broken rope trailing, bounding, snapping, rolling
over, acting as insanely as ever a dog acted.

“Oh! what’s the matter?” cried Dorothy.

“Keep away from that dog!” shrieked Tavia, stopping short and seizing
both Dorothy and Jennie. “He’s mad!”

The dog was blindly running, this way and that, the foam dripping from
his clashing jaws. He was, indeed, a most fearful sight. He had no real
intention in his savage charges, for a beast so afflicted with rabies
loses eyesight as well as sense; but suddenly he bounded directly for
the three girls.

They all shrieked in alarm, even Dorothy. Yet the latter the better
held her self-possession than the others. She heard Jennie scream: “Oh,
Ned!” while Tavia cried: “Oh, Nat!”

The young men were at the spot in a moment. Nat had picked up a croquet
mallet and one good blow laid the poor dog out—harmless forever more.

Tavia had seized the rescuer’s arm, Jennie was clinging to Ned.
Dorothy, awake at last to the facts of the situation, made a great
discovery—and almost laughed, serious as the peril had been.

“I believe I know which is which now,” she thought, forgetting her
alarm.

[Illustration: SUDDENLY HE BOUNDED DIRECTLY FOR THE THREE GIRLS.

  _Dorothy Dale’s Engagement_         _Page 108_
]




CHAPTER XIV

TAVIA IS DETERMINED


“After that scare I’m afraid the boys will have to go without a bird
dog,” Tavia said that night as she and Dorothy were brushing their hair
before the latter’s dressing-glass.

Tavia and Jennie and Ned and Nat were almost inseparable during the
daytime; but when the time came to retire the flyaway girl had to have
an old-time “confab,” as she expressed it, with her chum.

Dorothy was so bright and so busy all day long that nobody
discovered—not even the major—that she was rather “out of it.” The two
couples of young folk sometimes ran away and left Dorothy busy at some
domestic task in which she claimed to find much more interest than in
the fun her friends and cousins were having.

“It would have been a terrible thing if the poor dog had bitten one of
us,” Dorothy replied. “Dr. Agnew, the veterinary, says without doubt it
was afflicted with rabies.”

“And how scared your Aunt Winnie was!” Then Tavia began to giggle. “She
will be so afraid of anything that barks now, that she’ll want all the
trees cut down around the house.”

“That pun is unworthy of you, my dear,” Dorothy said placidly.

“Dear me, Doro Doodlekins!” exclaimed Tavia, suddenly and
affectionately, coming close to her chum and kissing her warmly. “You
are such a tabby-cat all of a sudden. Why! _you_ have grown up, while
the rest of us are only kids.”

“Yes; I am very settled,” observed Dorothy, smiling into the mirror at
her friend. “A cap for me and knitting very soon, Tavia. Then I shall
sit in the chimney corner and think——”

“Think about whom, my dear?” Tavia asked saucily. “That Garry Knapp, I
bet.”

“I wouldn’t _bet_,” sighed Dorothy. “It isn’t ladylike.”

“Oh—de-ah—me!” groaned Tavia. “You are thinking of him just the same.”

“I happened to be just now,” admitted Dorothy, and without blushing
this time.

“No! were you really?” demanded Tavia, eagerly. “Isn’t it funny he
doesn’t write?”

“No. Not at all.”

“But you’d think he would write and thank you for your letter if
nothing more,” urged the argumentative Tavia.

“No,” said Dorothy again.

“Why not?”

“Because Mr. Knapp never got my letter,” Dorothy said, opening her
bureau drawer and pulling the letter out from under some things laid
there. “See. It was returned to-day.”

“Oh, Dorothy!” gasped Tavia, both startled and troubled.

“Yes. It—it didn’t reach him somehow,” Dorothy said, and she could not
keep the trouble entirely out of her voice.

“Oh, my _dear_!” repeated Tavia.

“And I am sorry,” her friend went on to say; “for now he will not know
about the intentions of those men, Stiffbold and Lightly.”

“But, goodness! it serves him right,” exclaimed Tavia, suddenly. “He
didn’t give us his right address.”

“He gave us no address,” said Dorothy, sadly.

“Why, yes! he said Desert City——”

“He mentioned that place and said that his land was somewhere near
there. But he works on a ranch, which, perhaps, is a long way from
Desert City.”

“That’s so,” grumbled Tavia. “I forgot he’s only a cowboy.”

At this Dorothy flushed a little and Tavia, looking at her sideways and
eagerly, noted the flush. Her eyes danced for a moment, for the girl
was naturally chock-full of mischief.

But in a moment the expression of Tavia Travers’ face changed.
Dorothy was pensively gazing in the glass; she had halted in her hair
brushing, and Tavia knew that her chum neither saw her own reflection
nor anything else pictured in the mirror. The mirror of her mind held
Dorothy’s attention, and Tavia could easily guess the vision there.
A tall, broad-shouldered, broad-hatted young man with a frank and
handsome face and a ready smile that dimpled one bronzed cheek ever so
little and wrinkled the outer corners of his clear, far-seeing eyes.

Garry Knapp!

Tavia for the first time realized that Dorothy had found interest and
evidently a deep and abiding interest, in the young stranger from
Desert City. It rather shocked her. Dorothy, of all persons, to become
so very deeply interested in a man about whom they knew practically
nothing.

Tavia suddenly realized that she knew more about him than Dorothy did.
At least, she had been with Garry Knapp more than had her friend. It
was Tavia who had had the two hours’ tête-à-tête with the Westerner at
dinner on the evening before Garry Knapp departed so suddenly for the
West. All that happened and was said at that dinner suddenly unrolled
like a panorama before Tavia’s memory.

Why! she could picture it all plainly. She had been highly delighted
herself in the recovery of her bag and in listening to Garry’s story
of how it had been returned by the cash-girl’s sister. And, of course,
she had been pleased to be dining alone with a fine looking young man
in a hotel dining-room. She had rattled on when her turn came to talk,
just as irresponsibly as usual.

Now, in thinking over the occasion, she realized that the young man
from the West had been a shrewd questioner. He had got her started upon
Dorothy Dale, and before they came to the little cups of black coffee
Tavia had told just about all she knew regarding her chum.

The reader may be sure that all Tavia said was to Dorothy’s glory. She
had little need to explain to Garry Knapp what a beautiful character
Dorothy Dale possessed. Tavia had told about Dorothy’s family, her Aunt
Winnie’s wealth, the fortunes Major Dale now possessed both in the East
and West, and the fact that when Dorothy came of age, at twenty-one,
she would be wealthy in her own right. She had said all this to a young
man who was struggling along as a cowpuncher on a Western ranch, and
whose patrimony was a piece of rundown land that he could sell but for
a song, as he admitted himself. “And no chorus to it!” Tavia thought.

“I’m a bonehead!” she suddenly thought fiercely. “Nat would say my
noodle is solid ivory. I know now what was the matter with Garry Knapp
that evening. I know why he rushed up to me and asked for Dorothy, and
was what the novelists call ‘distrait’ during our dinner. Oh, what a
worm I am! A miserable, squirmy worm! Ugh!” and the conscience-stricken
girl fairly shuddered at her own reflection in the mirror and turned
away quickly so that Dorothy should not see her features.

“It’s—it’s the most _wonderful_ thing. And it began right under my
nose, my poor little ‘re-trousered’ nose, as Joe called it the other
day, and I didn’t really see it! I thought it was just a fancy on
Dorothy’s part! And I never thought of Garry Knapp’s side of it at all!
Oh, my heaven!” groaned Tavia, deep in her own soul. “Why wasn’t I born
with some good sense instead of good looks? I—I’ve spoiled my chum’s
life, perhaps. Goodness! it can’t be so bad as that.

“Of course, Garry Knapp is just the sort of fellow who would raise
a barrier of Dorothy’s riches between them. Goodness me!” added the
practical Tavia, “I’d like to see any barrier of wealth stop _me_ if I
wanted a man. I’d shin the wall in a hurry so as to be on the same side
of it as he was.”

She would have laughed at this fancy had she not taken a look at
Dorothy’s face again.

“Good-night!” she shouted into her chum’s ear, hugged her tight, kissed
her loudly, and ran away into her own room. Once there, she cried
all the time she was disrobing, getting into her lacy nightgown, and
pulling down the bedclothes.

Then she did not immediately go to bed. Instead, she tiptoed back to
the connecting door and closed it softly. She turned on the hanging
electric light over the desk.

“I’ll do it!” she said, with determined mien. “I’ll write to Lance
Petterby.” And she did so.




CHAPTER XV

THE SLIDE ON SNAKE HILL


Joe and Roger marched down at an early breakfast hour from the
upper regions of the big white house, singing energetically if not
melodiously a pæan of joy:

    “‘The frog he would a-wooing go——
        Bully for you! Bully for all!
      The frog he would a-wooing go——
        Bully for all, we say!’”

The boys’ determination to reach the low register of a bullfrog in that
“bully for all” line was very, very funny, especially in Roger’s case,
for his speaking voice was naturally a shrill treble.

Their joy, however, awoke any sleepers there might have been in the
house, and most of them came to their bedroom doors and peered out.

“What’s the matter with you blamed little rascals?” Ned, in a purple
bathrobe, demanded.

“Wouldn’t you boys just as lief sing as to make that noise?” Nat, in a
gray robe, and at his door, questioned.

But he grinned at his small cousins, for it hadn’t been so long ago
that he was just as much of a boy as they were.

“Hello, kids!” cried Tavia, sticking out a tousled head from her room.
“Tell us: What’s the good news?”

Jennie Hapgood peered out for an instant, saw Ned and Nat, and darted
back with an exclamatory “Oh!”

“I—I thought something had happened,” she faintly said, closing her
door all but a crack.

“Something has,” declared Joe.

“What is it, boys?” asked Dorothy, appearing fully dressed from her
room. “The ice?”

“What ice?” demanded Tavia. “Has the iceman come so early? Tell him to
leave a big ten-cent piece.”

“Huh!” grunted Roger, “there’s a whole lot more than a ten-cent piece
outside, and you’d see it if you’d put up your shade. The whole world’s
ice-covered.”

“So it is,” Joe agreed.

“There was rain last evening, you know,” Dorothy said, starting down
the lower flight of stairs briskly. “And then it turned very cold.
Everything is sheathed in ice out-of-doors. Doesn’t the warm air from
the registers feel nice? I _do_ love dry heat, even if it is more
expensive.”

“Bully!” roared Nat, who had darted back to run up the shade at one of
the windows in his room. “Look out, girls! it’s great.”

Every twig on every bush and tree and every fence rail and post were
covered with glistening ice. The sun, just rising red and rosy as
though he had but now come from a vigorous morning bath, threw his rays
in profusion over this fairy world and made a most spectacular scene
for the young people to look out upon. In an hour all of them were out
of doors to enjoy the spectacle in a “close up,” as Tavia called it.

“And we all ought to have spectacles!” she exclaimed a little later.
“This glare is blinding, and we’ll all have blinky, squinty eyes by
night.”

“Automobile goggles—for all hands!” exclaimed Nat. “They’re all smoked
glasses, too. I’ll get ’em,” and he started for the garage.

“But no automobile to-day,” laughed Jennie. “Think of the skidding on
this sheet of ice.” For the ground was sheathed by Jack Frost, as well
as the trees and bushes and fences.

Joe and Roger, well wrapped up, were just starting from the back door
and Dorothy hailed them:

“Where away, my hearties? Ahoy!”

“Aw—we’re just going sliding,” said Roger, stuttering.

“Where?” demanded the determined older sister.

“Snake Hill,” said Joe, shortly. He loved Dorothy; but this having
girls “butting in” all the time frayed his manly patience.

“Take care and don’t get hurt, boys!” called Tavia, roguishly, knowing
well that the sisterly advice was on the tip of Dorothy’s tongue and
that it would infuriate the small boys.

“Aw, you——”

Joe did not get any farther, for Nat in passing gave him a look. But
he shrugged his shoulders and went on with Roger without replying to
Tavia’s advice.

“Oh, what fun!” cried Jennie Hapgood, suddenly. “Couldn’t _we_ go
coasting?”

“Sure we could,” Ned agreed instantly. Lately he seemed to agree with
anything Jennie said and that without question.

“Tobogganing—oh, my!” cried Tavia, quick to seize upon a new scheme for
excitement and fun. Then she turned suddenly serious and added: “If
Dorothy will go. Not otherwise.”

Dorothy laughed at her openly. “Why not, Tavia?” she demanded. “Are
you afraid to trust the boys unless I’m along? I know they are awful
cut-ups.”

“I feel that Jennie and I should be more carefully chaperoned,” Tavia
declared with serious lips but twinkling eyes.

“Oh! _Oh!_ OH!” in crescendo from Nat, returning in time to hear this.
“Who needs a ‘bag o’ bones’——Excuse me! ‘Chaperon,’ I mean? What’s
afoot?”

Just then he slipped on the glare ice at the foot of the porch steps
and went down with a crash.

“You’re not, old man,” cried Ned as the girls squealed. “I hope you
have your shock-absorbers on. That was a jim-dandy!”

“Did—did it hurt you, Nat?” begged Tavia, with clasped hands.

“Oh-ugh!” grunted Nat, gingerly arising and examining the handful of
goggles he carried to see if they were all right. “Every bone in my
body is broken. Gee! that was some smash.”

“Do it again, dear,” Ned teased. “Your mother didn’t happen to see you
and she’s at the window now.”

“Aw, you go fish!” retorted the younger brother, for his dignity was
hurt if nothing else. “Wish it had been you.”

“So do I,” sighed Ned. “I’d have done it so much more gracefully. You
see, practice in the tango and foxtrot, not to mention other and more
intricate dance steps, _does_ help one. And you never would give proper
attention to your dancing, Sonny.”

“Here!” threatened Nat. “I’ll dance one of my fists off your ear——”

“I shall have to part you boys,” broke in Dorothy. “Threatening each
other with corporal punishment—and before the ladies.”

“Why,” declared Ned, hugging his brother in a bearlike hug as Nat
reached his level on the porch. “He can beat me to death if he likes,
the dear little thing! Come on, ’Thaniel. What do you say to giving the
girls a slide?”

“Heh?” ejaculated Nat. “What do you want to let ’em slide for? Got sick
of ’em so quick? Where are your manners?”

“Oh, Ned!” groaned Tavia. “Don’t you want us hanging around any more?”

“I am surprised at Mr. Edward,” Jennie joined in.

“Gee, Edward,” said Nat, grinning, “but you do put your foot in your
mouth every time you open it.”

Dorothy laughed at them all, but made no comment. Despite her late
seriousness she was jolly enough when she was one of the party. And she
agreed to be one to-day.

It was decided to get out Nat’s old “double-ripper,” see that it was
all right, and at once start for Snake Hill, where the smaller boys had
already gone.

“For this sun is going to melt the ice a good deal by noon. Of course,
it will be only a short cold snap this time of year,” Dorothy said,
with her usual practical sense.

They were some time in setting out, and it was not because the girls
“prinked,” as Tavia pointed out.

“I’d have you know we have been waiting five whole minutes,” she
proclaimed when Ned and Nat drew the long, rusty-ironed, double-ripper
sled out of the barn. “For once you boys cannot complain.”

“Those kids had been trying to use this big sled, I declare,” Nat said.
“And I had to find a couple of new bolts. Don’t want to break down on
the hill and spill you girls.”

“That would be spilling the beans for fair,” Ned put in. “Oh, beg
pardon! Be-ings, I mean. Get aboard, beautiful beings, and we’ll drag
you to the foot of the hill.”

They went on down the back road and into the woods with much merriment.
The foot of Snake Hill was a mile and a half from The Cedars. Part of
the hill was rough and wild, and there was not a farm upon its side
anywhere.

“I wonder where the kids are making their slide?” said Tavia, easily.

“That’s why I am glad we came this way,” Dorothy confessed. “They might
be tempted to slide down on this steep side, instead of going over to
the Washington Village road. _That’s_ smooth.”

“Trust the boys for finding the most dangerous place,” Jennie Hapgood
remarked. “I never saw their like.”

“That’s because you only have an older brother,” said Dorothy, wisely.
“He was past his reckless age while you were still in pinafores and
pigtails.”

“Reckless age!” scoffed Tavia. “When does a boy or a man ever cease to
be reckless?”

“Right-oh!” agreed Nat, looking back along the towline of the sled.
“See how he forever puts himself within the danger zone of pretty
girls. Gee! but Ned and I are a reckless team! What say, Neddie?”

“I say do your share of the pulling,” returned his brother. “Those
girls are no feather-weights, and this is up hill.”

“Oh, to be so insulted!” murmured Tavia. “To accuse us of bearing
extra flesh about with us when we all follow Lovely Lucy Larriper’s
directions, given in the _Evening Bazoo_. Not a pound of the
superfluous do we carry.”

“Dorothy’s getting chunky,” announced Nat, wickedly.

“You’re another!” cried Tavia, standing up for her chum. “Her lovely
curves are to be praised—oh!”

At that moment the young men ran the runners on one side of the sled
over an ice-covered stump, and the girls all joined in Tavia’s scream.
If there had not been handholds they would all three have been
ignominiously dumped off.

“Pardon, ladies! Watch your step!” Ned said. “And don’t get us confused
with your ‘beauty-talks’ business. Besides, it isn’t really modest. I
always blush myself when I inadvertently turn over to the woman’s page
of the evening paper. It is a delicate place for mere man to tread.”

“Hooray!” ejaculated his brother, making a false step himself just
then. “Wish I had creepers on. _This_ is a mighty delicate place for a
fellow to tread, too, my boy.”

In fact, they soon had to order the girls off the sled. The way was
becoming too steep and the side of the hill was just as slick as the
highway had been.

With much laughter and not a few terrified “squawks,” to quote Tavia,
the girls scrambled up the slope after the boys and the sled. Suddenly
piercing screams came from above them.

“Those rascals!” ejaculated Ned.

“Oh! they _are_ sliding on this side,” cried Dorothy. “Stop them, Ned!
Please, Nat!”

“What do you expect us to do?” demanded the latter. “Run out and catch
’em with our bare hands?”

They had come to a break in the path now and could see out over the
sloping pasture in which the boys had been sliding for an hour. Their
sled had worked a plain path down the hill; but at the foot of it was
an abrupt drop over the side of a gully. Dorothy Dale—and her cousins,
too—knew that gully very well. There was a cave in it, and in and about
that cave they had once had some very exciting adventures.

Joe and Roger had selected the smoothest part of the pasture to coast
in, it was true; but the party of young folk just arrived could see
that it was a very dangerous place as well. At the foot of the slide
was a little bank overhanging the gully. The smaller boys had been
stopping their sled right on the brink, and with a jolt, for the
watchers could see Joe’s heelprints in the ground where the ice had
been broken away.

They could hear the boys screaming out a school song at the top of the
hill. Ned and Nat roared a command to Joe and Roger to halt in their
mad career; but the two smaller boys were making so much noise that it
was evident their cousins’ shout was not heard by them.

They came down, Joe sitting ahead on the sled with his brother hanging
on behind, the feet of the boy sitting in front thrust out to halt the
sled. But if the sled should jump over the barrier, the two reckless
boys would fall twenty feet to the bottom of the gully.

“Stop them, do!” groaned Jennie Hapgood, who was a timid girl.

It was Dorothy who looked again at the little mound on the edge of
gully’s bank. The frost had got into the earth there, for it had been
freezing weather for several days before the ice storm of the previous
night. Now the sun was shining full on the spot, and she could see
where the boys’ feet, colliding with that lump of earth on the verge of
the declivity, had knocked off the ice and bared the earth completely.
There was, too, a long crack along the edge of the slight precipice.

“Oh, boys!” she called to Ned and Nat, who were struggling up the hill
once more, “stop them, do! You must! That bank is crumbling away. If
they come smashing down upon it again they may go over the brink, sled
and all!”




CHAPTER XVI

THE FLY IN THE AMBER


“Oh, Dorothy!” cried Tavia.

Jennie, with a shudder, buried her face in her hands.

Joe and Roger Dale were fairly flying down the hill, and would endeavor
to stop by collision with the same lump of frozen earth that had
previously been their bulwark.

“See! Ned! Nat!” cried Dorothy again. “We must stop them!”

But how stop the boys already rushing down hill on their coaster? It
seemed an impossible feat.

The White brothers dropped the towline of the big sled and scrambled
along the slippery slope toward the edge of the gully.

With a whoop of delight the two smaller boys, on their red coaster,
whisked past the girls.

“Stop them!” shrieked the three in chorus.

Ned reached the edge of the gully bank first. His weight upon the
cracking earth sent the slight barrier crashing over the brink. Just as
they had supposed there was not a possible chance of Joe’s stopping
the sled when it came down to this perilous spot.

Tavia groaned and wrung her hands. Jennie burst out crying. Dorothy
knew she could not help, yet she staggered after Ned and Nat, unable to
remain inactive like the other girls.

Ned recovered himself from the slippery edge of the bank; but by a
hair’s breadth only was he saved from being thrown to the bottom of the
gully. He crossed the slide in a bound and whirled swiftly, gesturing
to his brother to stay back. Nat understood and stopped abruptly.

“You grab Roger—I’ll take Joe!” panted Ned.

Just then the smaller boys on the sled rushed down upon them.
Fortunately, the steeper part of the hill ended some rods back from the
gully’s edge. But the momentum the coaster had gained brought it and
its burden of surprised and yelling boys at a very swift pace, indeed,
down to the point where Ned and Nat stood bracing themselves upon the
icy ground.

“Oh, boys!” shrieked Tavia, without understanding what Ned and Nat
hoped to accomplish. “_Do something!_”

And the very next instant they did!

The coaster came shooting down to the verge of the gully bank. Joe Dale
saw that the bank had given way and he could not stop the sled. Nor did
he dare try to swerve it to one side.

Ned and Nat, staring at the imperilled coasters, saw the look of fear
come into Joe’s face. Ned shouted:

“Let go all holds! We’ll grab you! Quick!”

Joe was a quick-minded boy after all. He was holding the steering
lines. Roger was clinging to his shoulders. If Joe dropped the lines,
both boys would be free of the sled.

That is what he did. Ned swooped and grabbed Joe. Nat seized upon the
shrieking and surprised Roger. The sled darted out from beneath the two
boys and shot over the verge of the bank, landing below in the gully
with a crash among the icy branches of a tree.

“Wha—what did you do that for?” Roger demanded of Nat, as the latter
set him firmly on his feet.

“Just for instance, kid,” growled Nat. “We ought to have let you both
go.”

“And I guess we would if it hadn’t been for Dorothy,” added Ned, rising
from where he had fallen with Joe on top of him.

“Cracky!” gasped Joe. “We’d have gone straight over that bank that
time, wouldn’t we? Gee, Roger! we’d have broken our necks!”

Even Roger was impressed by this stated fact. “Oh, Dorothy!” he cried,
“isn’t it lucky you happened along, so’s to tell Ned and Nat what to
do? I wouldn’t care to have a broken neck.”

“You are very right, kid,” growled Nat. “It’s Dorothy ‘as does
it’—always. She is the observant little lady who puts us wise to every
danger. ‘Who ran to catch me when I fell?’ My cousin!”

“Hold your horses, son,” advised his brother, with seriousness. “It was
Dorothy who smelled out the danger all right.”

“I do delight in the metaphors you boys use,” broke in Dorothy. “I
might be a beagle-hound, according to Ned. ‘Smelled out,’ indeed!”

“Aren’t you horrid?” sighed Jennie, for they were all toiling up the
hill again.

Ned put the cup of his hand under Jennie’s elbow and helped her over a
particularly glary spot. “Boys are very good folk,” he said, smiling
down into her pretty face, “if you take them just right. But they are
explosive, of course.”

Nat, likewise helping to drag the big sled, was walking beside Tavia.
Dorothy looked from one couple to the other, smiled, and then found
that her eyes were misty.

“Why!” she gasped under her breath, “I believe I am getting to be a
sour old maid. I am jealous!”

She turned her attention to the smaller boys and they all went gaily up
the hill. Nobody was going to discover that Dorothy Dale felt blue—not
if she could possibly help it!

Over on the other side of the hill where the smooth road lay the party
had a wonderfully invigorating coasting time. They all piled upon the
double-ripper—Joe and Roger, too—and after the first two or three
slides, the runners became freed of rust and the heavy sled fairly flew.

“Oh! this is great—great!” cried Tavia. “It’s just like flying. I
always did want to fly up into the blue empyrean——”

They were then resting at the top of the hill. Nat turned over on
his back upon the sled, struggled with all four limbs, and uttered a
soul-searching: “Woof! woof! Ow-row-row! Woof!”

“Get up, silly!” ordered Tavia. “Whenever I have any flight of fancy
_you_ always make it fall flat.”

“And if you tried a literal flight into the empyrean—ugh!—you’d fall
flat without any help,” declared Nat. “But we don’t want you to fly
away from us, Tavia. We couldn’t get along without you.”

“‘Thank you, kindly, sir, she said,’” responded his gay little friend.

However, Tavia and Nat could be serious on occasion. This very day
as the party tramped home to luncheon, dragging the sleds, having
recovered the one from the gully, they walked apart, and Dorothy noted
they were preoccupied. But then, so were Ned and Jennie. Dorothy’s eyes
danced now. She had recovered her poise.

“It’s great fun,” she whispered to her aunt, when they were back in the
house. “Watching people who are pairing off, I mean. I know ‘which is
which’ all right now. And I guess you do, too, Aunt Winnie?”

Mrs. White nodded and smiled. There was nothing to fear regarding this
intimacy between her big sons and Dorothy’s pretty friends. Indeed, she
could wish for no better thing to happen than that Ned and Nat should
become interested in Tavia and Jennie.

“But you, my dear?” she asked Dorothy, slyly. “Hadn’t we better be
finding somebody for you to walk and talk with?”

“I must play chaperon,” declared Dorothy, gaily. “No, no! I am going
to be an old maid, I tell you, Auntie dear.” And to herself she added:
“But never a sour, disagreeable, jealous one! Never _that_!”

Not that in secret Dorothy did not have many heavy thoughts when she
remembered Garry Knapp or anything connected with him.

“We must send those poor girls some Christmas remembrances,” Dorothy
said to Tavia, and Tavia understood whom she meant without having it
explained to her.

“Of course we will,” she cried. “You would not let me give Forty-seven
and her sister as much money as I wanted to for finding my bag.”

“No. I don’t think it does any good to put a premium on honesty,”
Dorothy said gravely.

“Huh! that’s just what Garry Knapp said,” said Tavia, reflectively.

“But now,” Dorothy hastened to add, “we can send them both at Christmas
time something really worth while.”

“Something warm to wear,” said Tavia, more than ordinarily thoughtful.
“They have to go through the cold streets to work in all weathers.”

It seemed odd, but Dorothy noticed that her chum remained rather
serious all that day. In the evening Nat came in with the mail bag and
dumped its contents on the hall table. This was just before dinner and
usually the cry of “Mail!” up the stairway brought most of the family
into the big entrance hall.

Down tripped Tavia with the other girls; Ned lounged in from the
library; Joe and Roger appeared, although they seldom had any letters,
only funny postal cards from their old-time chums at Dalton and from
local school friends.

Mrs. White took her mail off to her own room. She walked without her
crutch now, but favored the lame ankle. Joe seized upon his father’s
mail and ran to find him.

Nat sorted the letters out swiftly. Everybody had a few. Suddenly he
hesitated as he picked up a rather coarse envelope on which Tavia’s
name was scrawled. In the upper left-hand corner was written: “L.
Petterby.”

“Great Peter!” he gasped, shooting a questioning glance at Tavia. “Does
that cowpuncher write to you still?”

Perhaps there was something like an accusation in Nat’s tone. At least,
it was not just the tone to take with such a high-spirited person as
Tavia. Her head came up and her eyes flashed. She reached for the
letter.

“Isn’t that nice!” she cried. “Another from dear old Lance. He’s _such_
a desperately determined chap.”

At first the other young folk had not noted Nat’s tone or Tavia’s look.
But the young man’s next query all understood:

“Still at it, are you, Tavia? Can’t possibly keep from stringing ’em
along? It’s meat and drink to you, isn’t it?”

“Why, of course,” drawled Tavia, two red spots in her cheeks.

She walked away, slitting Lance Petterby’s envelope as she went. Nat’s
brow was clouded, and all through dinner he said very little. Tavia
seemed livelier and more social than ever, but Dorothy apprehended “the
fly in the amber.”




CHAPTER XVII

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND TAVIA?”


“You got this old timer running round in circles, Miss Tavia, when you
ask about a feller named Garford Knapp anywhere in this latitude, and
working for a feller named Bob. There’s more ‘Bobs’ running ranches out
here than there is bobwhites down there East where you live. Too bad
you can’t remember this here Bob’s last name, or his brand.

“Now, come to think, there was a feller named ‘Dimples’ Knapp used
to be found in Desert City, but not in Hardin. And you ought to see
Hardin—it’s growing some!”

       *       *       *       *       *

This was a part of what was in Lance Petterby’s letter. Had Nat White
been allowed to read it he would have learned something else—something
that not only would have surprised him and his brother and cousin,
but would have served to burn away at once the debris of trouble that
seemed suddenly heaped between Tavia and himself.

It was true that Tavia had kept up her correspondence with the
good-natured and good-looking cowboy in whom, while she was West, she
had become interested, and that against the advice of Dorothy Dale. She
did this for a reason deeper than mere mischief.

Lance Petterby had confided in her more than in any of the other
Easterners of the party that had come to the big Hardin ranch. Lance
was in love with a school teacher of the district while the party from
the East was at Hardin; and now he had been some months married to the
woman of his choice.

When Tavia read bits of his letters, even to Dorothy, she skipped all
mention of Lance’s romance and his marriage. This she did, it is true,
because of a mischievous desire to plague her chum and Ned and Nat. Of
late, since affairs had become truly serious between Nat and herself,
she would have at any time explained the joke to Nat had she thought of
it, or had he asked her about Lance.

The very evening previous to the arrival of this letter from the
cowpuncher to which Nat had so unwisely objected, Nat and Tavia had
gone for a walk together in the crisp December moonlight and had talked
very seriously.

Nat, although as full of fun as Tavia herself, could be grave; and he
made his intention and his desires very plain to the girl. Tavia would
not show him all that was in her heart. That was not her way. She was
always inclined to hide her deeper feelings beneath a light manner and
light words. But she was brave and she was honest. When he pinned her
right down to the question, yes or no, Tavia looked courageously into
Nat’s eyes and said:

“Yes, Nat. _I do._ But somebody besides you must ask me before I will
agree to—to ‘make you happy’ as you call it.”

“For the good land’s sake!” gasped Nat. “Who’s business is it but ours?
If you love me as I love you——”

“Yes, I know,” interrupted Tavia, with laughter breaking forth. “‘No
knife can cut our love in two.’ But, _dear_——”

“Oh, Tavia!”

“Wait, honey,” she whispered, with her face close pressed against his
shoulder. “No! don’t kiss me now. You’ve kissed me before—in fun. The
next time you kiss me it must be in solemn earnest.”

“By heaven, girl!” exclaimed Nat, hoarsely. “Do you think I am fooling
now?”

“No, boy,” she whispered, looking up at him again suddenly. “But
somebody else must ask me before I have a right to promise what you
want.”

“Who?” demanded Nat, in alarm.

“You know that I am a poor girl. Not only that, but I do not come from
the same stock that you do. There is no blue blood in my veins,” and
she uttered a little laugh that might have sounded bitter had there not
been the tremor of tears in it.

“What nonsense, Tavia!” the young man cried, shaking her gently by the
shoulders.

“Oh no, Nat! Wait! I am a poor girl and I come of very, very common
stock. I don’t mean I am ashamed of my poverty, or of the fact that my
father and mother both sprang from the laboring class.

“But you might be expected when you marry to take for a wife a girl
from a family whose forebears were _something_. Mine were not. Why, one
of my grandfathers was an immigrant and dug ditches——”

“Pshaw! I had a relative who dug a ditch, too. In Revolutionary times——”

“That is it exactly,” Tavia hastened to say. “I know about him. He
helped dig the breastworks on Breeds Hill and was wounded in the Battle
of Bunker Hill. I know all about that. Your people were Pilgrim and
Dutch stock.”

“Immigrants, too,” said Nat, muttering. “And maybe some of them left
their country across the seas for their country’s good.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the shrewd Tavia. “Being an immigrant in
America in sixteen hundred is one thing. Being an immigrant in the
latter end of the nineteenth century is an entirely different pair of
boots.”

“Oh, Tavia!”

“No. Your mother has been as kind to me—and for years and years—as
though I were her niece, too, instead of just one of Dorothy’s friends.
She may have other plans for her sons, Nat.”

“Nonsense!”

“I will not answer you,” the girl cried, a little wildly now, and began
to sob. “Oh, Nat! Nat! I have thought of this so much. Your mother must
ask me, or I can never tell you what I want to tell you!”

Nat respected her desire and did not kiss her although she clung,
sobbing, to him for some moments. But after she had wiped away her
tears and had begun to joke again in her usual way, they went back to
the house.

And Nat White knew he was walking on air! He could not feel the path
beneath his feet.

He was obliged to go to town early the next morning, and when he
returned, as we have seen, just before dinner, he brought the mail bag
up from the North Birchland post-office.

He could not understand Tavia’s attitude regarding Lance Petterby’s
letter, and he was both hurt and jealous. Actually he was jealous!

“Do you understand Tavia?” he asked his cousin Dorothy, right after
dinner.

“My dear boy,” Dorothy Dale said, “I never claimed to be a seer. _Who_
understands Tavia—fully?”

“But you know her better than anybody else.”

“Better than Tavia knows herself, perhaps,” admitted Dorothy.

“Well, see here! I’ve asked her to marry me——”

“Oh, Nat! my dear boy! I am so glad!” Dorothy cried, and she kissed her
cousin warmly.

“Don’t be so hasty with your congratulations,” growled Nat, still red
and fuming. “She didn’t tell me ‘yes.’ I don’t know now that I want her
to. I want to know what she means, getting letters from that fellow out
West.”

“Oh, Nat!” sighed Dorothy, looking at him levelly. “Are you _sure_ you
love her?”

He said nothing more, and Dorothy did not add a word. But Tavia waited
in vain that evening for Mrs. White to come to her and ask the question
which she had told Nat his mother must ask for him.




CHAPTER XVIII

CROSS PURPOSES


Tavia was as loyal a girl as ever stepped in shoe-leather. That was an
oft-repeated expression of Major Dale’s. He loved “the flyaway” for
this very attribute.

Tavia was now attempting to bring joy and happiness for Dorothy out of
chaos. Therefore, she felt she dared take nobody into her confidence
regarding Lance Petterby’s letter.

She replied to Lance at once, explaining more fully about Garry Knapp,
the land he was about to sell, and the fact that Eastern schemers were
trying to obtain possession of Knapp’s ranch for wheat land and at a
price far below its real worth.

Satisfaction, Tavia might feel in this attempt to help Dorothy; but
everything else in the world was colored blue—very blue, indeed!

When one’s ear has become used to the clatter of a noisy little
windmill, for instance, and the wind suddenly ceases and it remains
calm, the cessation of the mill’s clatter is almost a shock to the
nerves.

This was about the way Tavia’s sudden shift of manner struck all those
observant ones at The Cedars. As the season of joy and gladness and
good-will approached, Tavia Travers sank lower and lower into a Slough
of Despond.

Had it not been for Dorothy Dale, the others must have audibly remarked
Tavia’s lack of sparkle. Though Dorothy did not imagine that Tavia
was engaged in any attempt to help her, and because of that attempt
had refused to explain Lance Petterby’s letter to Nat White, yet she
loyally began to act as a buffer between the others and the contrary
Tavia. More than once did Dorothy fly to Tavia’s rescue when she seemed
to be in difficulties.

Tavia had a streak of secrecy in her character that sometimes placed
her in a bad light when judged by unknowing people. Dorothy, however,
felt sure that on this present occasion there was no real fault to be
found with her dear friend.

Nat refused to speak further about his feeling toward Tavia; Dorothy
knew better than to try to tempt Tavia herself to explain. The
outstanding difficulty was the letter from the Westerner. Feeling sure,
as she did, that Tavia liked Nat immensely and really cared nothing for
any other man, Dorothy refrained from hinting at the difficulty to her
chum. Let matters take their course. That was the better way, Dorothy
believed. She felt that Nat’s deeper affections had been moved and
that only the surface of his pride and jealousy were nicked. On the
other hand she knew Tavia to be a most loyal soul, and she could not
imagine that there was really any cause, other than mischief, for Tavia
to allow that letter to stand between Nat and herself.

To smooth over the rough edges and hide any unpleasantness from the
observation of the older members of the family, Dorothy became very
active in the social life of The Cedars again. No longer did she
refuse to attend the cousins and Jennie and Tavia in any venture. It
was a quintette of apparently merry young people once more; never a
quartette. Nor were Nat and Tavia seen alone together during those few
short weeks preceding Christmas.

Secretly, Dorothy was very unhappy over the misunderstanding between
her chum and Nat. That it was merely a disagreement and would not cause
a permanent break between the two was her dear hope. For she wished
to see them both happy. Although at one time she thought the steadier
Ned, the older cousin, might be a better mate for her flyaway friend,
she had come to see it differently of late. If anybody could understand
and properly appreciate Tavia Travers it was Nathaniel White. His mind,
too, was quick, his imagination colorful. Dorothy Dale, with growing
understanding of character and the mental equipment to judge her
associates better than most girls, or young women, of her age, believed
in her heart that neither Tavia nor Nat would ever get along with any
other companion as well as the two could get along together.

The two “wildfires,” as Aunt Winnie sometimes called them, had always
had occasional bickerings. But a dispute is like a thunderstorm—it
usually clears the air.

Nor did Dorothy doubt for a moment that her cousin and her friend were
deeply in love now, the one with the other. That Tavia had turned
without explanation about Lance Petterby’s letter from Nat and that the
latter had told Dorothy he was not sure he wished Tavia to answer the
important question he had put to her, sprang only from pique on Nat’s
side, and, Dorothy was sure, from something much the same in her chum’s
heart.

Light-minded and frivolous as Tavia had always appeared, Dorothy knew
well that the undercurrent of her chum’s feelings was both deep and
strong. Where she gave affection Tavia herself would have said she
“loved hard!”

Dorothy had watched, during these past few weeks especially, the
intimacy grow between her chum and Nat White. They were bound to each
other, Dorothy believed, by many ties. Disagreements did not count.
All that was on the surface. Underneath, the tide of their feelings
intermingled and flowed together. She could not believe that any
little misunderstanding could permanently divide Tavia and Nat.

But they were at cross purposes—that was plain. Nat was irritated and
Tavia was proud. Dorothy knew that her chum was just the sort of person
to be hurt most by being doubted.

Nat should have understood that if Tavia had given him reason to
believe she cared for him, her nature was so loyal that in no
particular could she be unfaithful to the trust he placed in her. His
quick appearance of doubt when he saw the letter from the West had hurt
Tavia cruelly.

Yet, Dorothy Dale did not try to make peace between the two by going
to Nat and putting these facts before him in the strong light of good
sense. She was quite sure that if she did so Nat would come to terms
and beg Tavia’s pardon. That was Nat’s way. He never took a middle
course. He must be either at one extreme of the pendulum’s swing or the
other.

And Dorothy was sure that it would not be well, either for Nat or for
Tavia, for the former to give in without question and shoulder the
entire responsibility for this lover’s quarrel. For to Dorothy Dale’s
mind there was a greater shade of fault upon her chum’s side of the
controversy than there was on Nat’s. Because of the very fact that all
her life Tavia had been flirting or making believe to flirt, there was
some reason for Nat’s show of spleen over the Petterby letter.

Dorothy did not know what had passed between Tavia and Nat the evening
before the arrival of the letter. She did not know what Tavia had
demanded of Nat before she would give him the answer he craved.

Nat kept silence. Mrs. White did not come to Tavia and ask the question
which meant so much to the warm-hearted girl. Tavia suffered in every
fiber of her being, but would not betray her feelings. And Dorothy
waited her chance to say something to her chum that might help to clear
up the unfortunate state of affairs.

So all were at cross purposes, and gradually the good times at The
Cedars became something of a mockery.




CHAPTER XIX

WEDDING BELLS IN PROSPECT


Four days before Christmas Dorothy Dale, her cousins, and Tavia all
boarded the train with Jennie Hapgood, bound for the latter’s home in
Pennsylvania. On Christmas Eve Jennie’s brother Jack was to be married,
and he had written jointly with the young lady who was to be “Mrs.
Jack” after that date, that the ceremony could not possibly take place
unless the North Birchland crowd of young folk crossed the better part
of two states, to be “in at the finish.”

“Goodness me,” drawled Tavia, when this letter had come from Sunnyside
Farm. “He talks as though wedded bliss were something like a sentence
to the penitentiary. How horrid!”

“It is. For a lot of us men,” Nat said, grinning. “No more stag parties
with the fellows for one thing. Cut out half the time one might spend
at the club. And then, there is the pocket peril.”

“The—the _what_?” demanded Jennie. “What under the sun is that?”

“A new one on me,” said Ned. “Out with it. ’Thaniel. What is the
‘pocket peril’?”

“Why, after a fellow is married they tell me that he never knows when
he puts his hand in his pocket whether he will find money there or not.
Maybe Friend Wife has beaten him to it.”

“For shame!” cried Dorothy. “You certainly deserve never to know what
Tavia calls ’wedded bliss.’”

“I have my doubts as to my ever doing so,” muttered Nat, his face
suddenly expressing gloom; and he marched away.

Jennie and Ned did not observe this. Indeed, it was becoming so with
them that they saw nobody but each other. Their infatuation was so
plain that sometimes it was really funny. Yet even Tavia, with her
sharp tongue, spared the happy couple any gibes. Sometimes when she
looked at them her eyes were bright with moisture. Dorothy saw this, if
nobody else did.

However, the trip to western Pennsylvania was very pleasant, indeed.
Dorothy posed as chaperon, and the boys voted that she made an
excellent one.

The party got off gaily; but after a while Ned and Jennie slipped away
to the observation platform, cold as the weather was, and Nat plainly
felt ill at ease with his cousin and Tavia. He grumbled something
about Ned having become “an old poke,” and sauntered into another car,
leaving Tavia alone with Dorothy Dale in their compartment. Almost at
once Dorothy said to her chum:

“Tavia, dear, are you going to let this thing go on, and become worse
and worse?”

“What’s that?” demanded Tavia, a little tartly.

“This misunderstanding between you and Nat? Aren’t you risking your own
happiness as well as his?”

“Dorothy——”

“Don’t be angry, dear,” her chum hastened to say. “Please don’t. I hate
to see both you and Nat in such a false position.”

“How false?” demanded Tavia.

“Because you are neither of you satisfied with yourselves. You are both
wrong, perhaps; but I think that under the circumstances you, dear,
should put forth the first effort for reconciliation.”

“With Nat?” gasped Tavia.

“Yes.”

“Not to save my life!” cried her friend. “Never!”

“Oh, Tavia!”

“You take his side because of that letter,” Tavia said accusingly.
“Well, if _that’s_ the idea, here’s another letter from Lance!” and she
opened her bag and produced an envelope on which appeared the cowboy’s
scrawling handwriting. Dorothy knew it well.

“Oh, Tavia!”

“Don’t ‘Oh, Tavia’ me!” exclaimed the other girl, her eyes bright with
anger. “Nobody has a right to choose my correspondents for me.”

“You know that all the matter is with Nat, he is jealous,” Dorothy said
frankly.

“What right has he to be?” demanded Tavia in a hard voice, but looking
away quickly.

“Dear,” said Dorothy softly, laying her hand on Tavia’s arm, “he told
me he—he asked you to marry him.”

“He never!”

“But you knew that was what he meant,” Dorothy said shrewdly.

Tavia was silent, and her friend went on to say:

“You know he thinks the world of you, dear. If he didn’t he would not
have been angered. And I do think—considering everything—that you ought
not to continue to let that fellow out West write to you——”

Tavia turned on her with hard, flashing eyes. She held out the letter,
saying in a voice quite different from her usual tone:

“I want you to read this letter—but only on condition that you say
nothing to Nat White about it, not a word! Do you understand, Dorothy
Dale?”

“No,” said Dorothy, wondering. “I do _not_ understand.”

“You understand that I am binding you to secrecy, at least,” Tavia
continued in the same tone.

“Why—yes—_that_,” admitted her friend.

“Very well, then, read it,” said Tavia and turned to look out of the
window while Dorothy withdrew the closely written, penciled pages from
the envelope and unfolded them.

In a moment Dorothy cried aloud:

“Oh, Tavia! you wrote him about Mr. Knapp!”

“Yes,” said Tavia.

“Oh, my dear! is _that_ why he wrote you the other time? Of course! And
he says he can’t find him. Dimples Knapp he calls him. Oh, my dear!”

“Well,” said Tavia, in the same gruff voice. “Read on.” She did not
turn from the window.

“Oh, Tavia!” Dorothy said in a moment or two. “Those men are out there
buying up wheat lands—Stiffbold and Lightly. Lance says he has met
them.”

“I am afraid your friend, ‘Garry Owen,’ will be beat,” said Tavia,
shrugging her shoulders. “Do you see what Lance says next?”

“He thinks he may get word of this Knapp he knows in a few days. Thinks
he may be working for a man named Robert Douglas. Oh, Tavia! Of course
he is! That is the name of his employer!”

But Tavia displayed very little interest. “I had forgotten,” she said.

“Bob Douglas! Of course you remember! And Lance says he’ll get word to
him and tip him off, as he calls it, about the land-sharks. Oh, Tavia!”

Her friend still looked out of the window. Dorothy shook her by the
elbow, staring at the written lines of Lance Petterby’s letter.

“What does this mean?” she demanded. “‘Sue sends her best, and so does
Ma.’ Who is Sue?”

“Why, that is Mrs. Petterby, the younger,” drawled Tavia, flashing a
glance at Dorothy.

“Married?” gasped Dorothy.

“According to law,” responded Tavia, solemnly. “And worse. Read on.”

Breathlessly, Dorothy Dale consumed the remainder of the letter. Some
of it she murmured aloud:

“‘The kid is a wonder. You’d ought to see her. Two weeks old to-day
and I bet she could sit a bucking pony. You’re elected godmother, Miss
Tavia, because she is going to be called ‘Octavia Susan Petterby,’
believe me!”

“Oh, Tavia!” finished Dorothy, crumpling the letter in her hand. “And
you never told us a word about it. _That’s_ why you wanted to buy a
silver mug!”

“Yes,” Tavia admitted.

“And they have been married how long?”

“Almost a year. Soon after we came away from Hardin.”

“And you never said a word,” Dorothy said accusingly. “We all
supposed——”

“That I was flirting with poor old Lance. Yes,” said Tavia, her eyes
and voice both hard.

“And why shouldn’t we think so?” asked Dorothy, quietly. “You do so
many queer things. Or you _used_ to.”

“I don’t now,” said her friend, bruskly.

“No. But how were we to know? How was Nat to know?” she added.

Then Tavia turned on her with excitement. “You promised not to tell!”
she said. “Don’t you _dare_ let Nat White know about this letter!”




CHAPTER XX

A GIRL OF TO-DAY


“It was the prettiest wedding I ever saw,” Dorothy Dale declared, as
the party, bound for North Birchland again, climbed aboard the midnight
train at the station nearest Sunnyside Farm.

“And the bride was too sweet for anything,” added Jennie Hapgood, who
was returning to The Cedars as agreed, to remain until after New Year’s.

“Jack looked quite as they always do,” said Ned in a hollow voice.

“As who always do?” demanded Tavia.

“The brooms.”

“‘Brooms’!” cried Dorothy. “Grooms, Ned?”

“He’s a ‘new broom’ all right,” chuckled Edward White. “Poor chap! he
doesn’t know what it means to love, honor, obey, and buy frocks and
hats for a girl of to-day.”

“Pah!” retorted his brother, “you’d like to be in his shoes, Nedward.”

“Me? I—guess—not!” declared Edward. “I have my own shoes to stand in,
thank you,” and Ned looked at Jennie Hapgood with a meaning air.

So the party came back to The Cedars in much the same state as it had
gone to the wedding. Ned and Jennie were so much taken up with each
other that they were frankly oblivious to the mutual attitude of Nat
and Tavia. Dorothy Dale was kept busy warding off happenings that might
attract the particular attention of Major Dale and Aunt Winnie to the
real situation between the two.

Besides, Dorothy had “troubles of her own,” as the saying goes. She
felt that she must decide, and neglect the decision no longer, a very,
very important matter that concerned herself more than it did anybody
else in the world—a matter that she was selfishly interested in.

Ample time had passed now for Dorothy Dale to consider from all
standpoints this really wonderful thing that had come into her life
and had so changed her outlook. On the surface she might seem the same
Dorothy Dale to her friends and relatives; but secretly the whole world
was different to her since that shopping trip she and Tavia had taken
to New York wherein she and her chum had met Garry Knapp.

A thousand times Dorothy had called up the details of every incident
of the adventure—this greatest of all adventures Dorothy Dale had ever
entered upon.

She felt that she should never meet again a man like Garry Knapp. None
of the boys she had known before had ever made much of an impression
on Dorothy Dale’s well-balanced mind. But from the beginning she had
looked upon the young Westerner with a new vision. His reflection
filled the mirror of her thought as splendidly as at first. The
dimple that showed faintly in one bronzed cheek, his rather large but
well-formed features, his mop of black hair, his broad shoulders and
well-set-up body—all these personal attributes belonging to Garry Knapp
were as clearly fixed in Dorothy’s mind now as at first.

So, too, her memory of all that had happened was clear. Garry’s
proffered help in the department store when Tavia was in trouble first
aroused Dorothy to an appreciation of his unstudied kindness. It was
the most natural thing in the world for him to offer aid when he saw
anybody in trouble.

Dorothy blushed now whenever she thought of her doubts of Garry
Knapp when she had seen him so easily fall into conversation with
the department store salesgirl on the street. Why! that was exactly
what he would do—especially if the girl asked him for help. She still
blushed at the remembrance of the jealous feeling that had prompted her
avoidance of the young man until his action was explained. Her pique
had shortened her acquaintanceship with Garry Knapp. She might have
known him far better had it not been for that incident of the shopgirl.

“And my own suspicion was the cause of it. I refused to meet Garry
Knapp as Tavia did. Why! she knows him better than I do,” Dorothy Dale
told herself.

It was after her discovery of why Tavia had been writing to Lance
Petterby and receiving answers from that “happy tho’ married cowboy
person,” to quote Tavia, that Dorothy so searched her own heart
regarding Garry Knapp.

“You are a dear, loyal friend, Tavia,” she told her chum. “But—but
_why_ are you trying so to get in touch with Mr. Knapp?”

“Really want me to tell you?” demanded Tavia.

“Yes.”

“Truly-rooly—black-and-bluely?”

“Of course, dear.”

“Because I have been a regular ivory-kopf!” cried Tavia. “Forgive my
hybrid German. Oh, Dorothy! I didn’t want to tell you, for I hoped
Lance might quickly find your Garry Knapp.”

“_My_ Garry Knapp,” said Dorothy, blushing.

“Yes, my dear. Don’t dodge the fact. We all seem to be suddenly grown
up. We are shucking our shells of maidenhood like crabs——”

“Tavia! Horrors! Don’t!” begged Dorothy.

“Don’t like my metaphor, dear?” chuckled Tavia. But she was grim again
in a moment, continuing: “No use dodging the fact, I repeat. You were
interested in that man from the beginning. Now, weren’t you?”

“Ye—es, Tavia,” admitted her friend.

“And I should have seen that you were. I ought to have known, when you
were put out with him because of that shopgirl, that for that very
reason you were more interested in Garry Knapp than in any other fellow
who ever shined up to you——”

“Tavia! How can you?”

“Huh! Just as e-asy,” responded her friend, with a wicked twinkle in
her eye and mimicking Garry Knapp’s manner of speaking. “Now, listen!”
she hurried on. “That night I took dinner with him alone—the evening
you had the—er—headache and went to bed. ’Member?”

“Oh, yes,” sighed Dorothy, nodding.

“He just pumped me about you,” said Tavia. “And I was just foolish
enough to tell him all about your money—how rich your folks were and
all that.”

“Oh!” and Dorothy flushed again.

“You don’t get it—not yet,” said Tavia, wagging her head. “Afterwards
I remembered how funny he looked when I had told him that you were a
regular ‘sure-enough’ heiress, and I remembered some things he said,
too.”

“What do you mean?” asked Dorothy, faintly.

“Why, I scared him away from you,” blurted out Tavia, almost in tears
when she thought of what she called her “ivory-headedness.” “I know
that he was just as deeply smitten with you, dear, as—as—well, as ever
a man could be! But he’s poor—and he’s game. I think that is why he
went off in such a hurry and without trying _very_ hard to see you
again.”

“Oh, Tavia! Do you believe that is so?” and the joy in Dorothy’s voice
could not be mistaken.

“Well!” exclaimed Tavia, “isn’t that pretty bad? You act as though you
were pleased.”

Dorothy blushed again, but she was brave. She gazed straight into
Tavia’s eyes as she said:

“I am pleased, dear. I am pleased to learn that possibly it was not his
lack of interest in poor little me that sent him away from New York so
hastily—at least, without making a more desperate effort to see me.”

“Oh, Doro!” cried Tavia, suddenly putting both arms around her friend.
“Do you actually mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“That you l-l-_like_ him so much?”

Dorothy laughed aloud, but nodded emphatically. “I l-l-_like_ him just
as much as that,” she mocked. “And if it’s only my father’s money in
the way——”

“And your own. You really will be rich when you are twenty-one,” Tavia
reminded her. “I tell you, that young man was troubled a heap when
he learned from me that you were so well off. If you had been a poor
girl—if you had been _me_, for instance—he would never have left New
York City without knowing his fate. I could see it in his eyes.”

“Oh, Tavia!” gasped Dorothy, with clasped hands and shining eyes.

“My dear,” said her friend, with serious mouth but dancing orbs. “I
never would have thought it possible—of _you_. ‘Love like a lightning
bolt’—just like that. And the cautious Dorothy!” Then she went on:
“But, Dorothy, how will you ever find him?”

“You have done your best, Tavia,” her friend said, nodding. “I
suppose I might have tried Lance Petterby, too. But now I shall put
Aunt Winnie’s lawyers to work out there. If possible, Mr. Knapp must
be found before those real estate sharks buy his land. But if the
transaction is completed, we shall have to reach him in some other way.”

“Dorothy! You sound woefully strong-minded. Do you mean to go right
after the young man—just as though it were leap year?” and Tavia
giggled.

“I hope,” said Dorothy Dale, girl of to-day that she was, “I have
too much good sense to lose the chance of showing the man I love
that he can win me, because of any foolish or old-fashioned ideas of
conventionalities. If Garry Knapp thinks as much of me as I do of him,
his lack of an equal fortune sha’n’t stand in the way, either.”

“Oh, Doro! it sounds awful—but bully!” Tavia declared, her eyes round.
“Do you mean it?”

“Yes,” said Dorothy, courageously.

“But suppose he is one of those stubborn beings you read about—one of
the men who will not marry a girl with money unless he has a ‘working
capital’ himself?”

“That shall not stand in our way.”

“What do you mean?” gasped Tavia. “Not that you would give up your
money for him?”

“If I find I love him enough—yes,” said Dorothy, softly.




CHAPTER XXI

THE BUD UNFOLDS


In a certain way it ages a girl to be left motherless as Dorothy Dale
had been. She had been obliged to “play mother” herself so early that
her maternal instincts were strongly and early developed.

Until the Dale family had come away from Dalton to live with Aunt
Winnie at The Cedars, Dorothy had exercised her motherly oversight in
the little family. Indeed, Roger scarcely knew any other mother than
Dorothy, and Joe had almost forgotten her who had passed away soon
after Roger was born.

As for the major, he had soon given all domestic matters over into the
small but capable hands of “the little captain” while they were still
struggling in poverty. After coming to The Cedars, Dorothy, of course,
had been relieved of the close oversight of domestic and family matters
that had previously been her portion. But its effect upon her character
was plain to all observing eyes. Nor had her so early developed
maternal characteristics failed to affect the other members of the
family.

Now that she was really grown up past the schoolgirl age and of a
serious and thoughtful demeanor, even Aunt Winnie looked upon her as
being much older than Tavia—and years older than the boys. That Ned and
Nat were both several years Dorothy’s senior made no difference.

“Boys are to a degree irresponsible—and always are, no matter how old
they become,” said Aunt Winnie. “But _Dorothy_——”

Her emphasis was approved by the major. “The little captain is some
girl,” he said, chuckling. “Beg pardon! woman grown, eh, Sister?”

Nor was his approval merely of Dorothy’s surface qualities. He knew
that his pretty daughter was a much deeper thinker than most girls
of her age, and he had seldom interfered in any way with Dorothy’s
personal decisions on any subject.

“Let her find out for herself. She won’t go far wrong,” had often been
his remark at first when his sister had worried over Dorothy in her
school days. And so the girl developed into something that not all
girls are—an original thinker.

Knowing her as the major did and trusting in her good sense so fully,
he was less startled, perhaps, than he would otherwise have been when
Dorothy took him into her confidence regarding Garry Knapp. Tavia had
refrained from joking about the Westerner from the first. Little
had been said before the family about their adventures in New York.
Therefore, the major was not prepared in the least for the introduction
of the subject.

Perhaps it would not have been introduced in quite the way it was
had it not grown out of another matter. It came the day after
Christmas—that day in which everybody is tired and rather depressed
because of the over-exertion of celebrating the feast of good Kris
Kringle. Dorothy was busy at the sewing basket beside her father’s
comfortable chair. She knew that Tavia was writing letters and just at
this moment Major Dale dropped his paper to peer out of the window.

“There goes Nat—off for a tramp, I’ll be bound. And he’s alone,” the
major said.

“Yes,” agreed Dorothy without looking up.

“And Ned and that Jennie girl are in the library, and you’re here,”
pursued the major, with raised eyebrows. “Where is Tavia?”

She told him; but she refrained again from looking up, and he finally
bent forward in his chair and thrust a forefinger under her chin,
raising it and making her look at him.

“Say! what is the matter with Tavia and Nat?” he asked.

“Are you sure there is anything the matter, Major?” Dorothy responded.

“Can’t fool me. They’re at outs. And you, Captain? Is that what makes
you so grave, my dear?”

“No, Daddy,” she said, putting down her work and looking into his
rugged face this time of her own volition.

“Something personal, my dear?”

“Very personal, Daddy,” calling him by the intimate name the children
used. “I—I think I—I am in love.”

He neither made a joke of it nor appeared astonished. He just eyed her
quietly and nodded. The flush mounted into her face and she glowed like
a red rose. After all, it is not the easiest thing in the world to turn
the heart out for others to look at, even the dearest of others.

“I think I am in love. And the young man is poor—and—and I am afraid
our money is going to stand between him and me.”

“My dear Dorothy,” said the major, “are you really in love with
somebody, or in love with love?”

“I know what you mean,” his daughter said, with a tremulous little
laugh and shaking her head. “Seeing so many about us falling into
the toils of Dan Cupid, you think I perhaps imagine I have fixed my
affections upon some particular object. Is that it, Major?”

He nodded, a quizzical little smile on his lips.

“No” she said. “It isn’t anywhere near as simple as that. I—I do
love him I believe. He is the only man I have ever really thought twice
about. He is the center of all my thoughts now, and has been for a long
time.”

“But—but who is he?” the major gasped.

“Garry Knapp.”

Her father repeated the name slowly and his expression of countenance
certainly displayed amazement. “Did I ever see the young man?”

“No.”

“Your aunt—one of your cousins’ friends?”

“Dear Daddy,” said Dorothy, frankly and smiling a little. “I have done
something not at all as you would expect cautious little me to do. I
have picked a man—and, oh, he is a man, Daddy!—right out of the great
mob of folks. Nobody introduced us. We just—well, _met_.”

“The young man has been spoken of by Tavia, I believe,” said Major
Dale, quite cheerfully. “I remember now. Mr. Knapp. You met him at the
hotel in New York?”

“Before we got to the hotel. In the train I noticed him—vaguely. On the
platform where we changed cars at that Manhattan Transfer place, I saw
him better. I—I never was so much interested in a man before.”

Major Dale looked at her rather solemnly for a moment. “Are you sure,
my dear, it is anything more than fancy?”

“Quite sure.”

“And—and—_he_——”

The man’s voice actually trembled. Dorothy looked at him again, dropped
the sewing from her lap and suddenly flung her arms about his neck.

“Oh, my dear!” she murmured, her face hidden. “I know he loves me, too.
I am sure of it! Let me tell you.”

Breathlessly, her voice quavering a little but full of an element
of happiness that fairly thrilled her listener, she related all the
incidents—even the petty details—of her acquaintance with Garford
Knapp, of Desert City. So clear was her picture of the young man that
the major saw him in his mind’s eye just as Garry appeared to Dorothy
Dale.

She went over every little thing that had happened in New York
in connection with the young Westerner. She told of her own mean
suspicions and how they had risen from a feeling of pique and jealousy
that never in her life had she experienced before.

“That was a rather small way for me to show real feeling for a person.
But it caught me unprepared,” said Dorothy, with a full-throated laugh
although her eyes were full of tears. “I do not believe I am naturally
of a jealous disposition; and I should never let such a feeling get the
better of me again. It has cost me too much.”

She went on and told the major of the incidents that followed and how
Garry Knapp had gone away so hastily without her speaking to him again.

But the major rather lost the thread of her story for a moment. He was
staring closely at her, shaking his shaggy head slowly.

“My dear! my dear!” he murmured, “you have grown up. The bud
has unfolded. Our demure little Dorothy is—and with shocking
abruptness—blown into full womanhood. My dear!” and he put his arms
about her again more tightly.




CHAPTER XXII

DOROTHY DECIDES


Joe and Roger Dale did not feel that they were exactly neglected during
these winter holidays. It is true they found their cousins, the “big
fellows,” not so much fun as they were wont to be, and even Dorothy
failed them at times.

But because of these very facts the lads had more freedom of action
than ever before. They were learning to think for themselves,
especially Joe. Nor was it always mischief they thought of, though
frequently managing to get into trouble—for what live and healthy boys
of their age do not?

Many of their narrow escapes even Dorothy knew nothing about. None of
the family, for instance, knew about Joe and the lame pigeon until
the North Birchland Fire Department was on the grounds with all their
apparatus.

This moving incident (Tavia declared it should have been a movie
incident) happened between Christmas and the new year. Although there
had been a good fall of snow before Kris Kringle’s day, it had all gone
now and the roads were firmly frozen again, so the Fire Department got
to The Cedars in record time.

To begin with Joe and Roger were breeders of pigeons, as Ned and Nat
had been several years before. On pleasant days in the winter they let
their flock into the big flying cage, and occasionally allowed the
carriers to take a flight in the open.

On one of these occasions when the flock returned there was a stray
with them. Roger’s sharp eyes spied this bird which alighted on the
ridgepole of the stable.

“Oh, lookut! lookut!” exclaimed the youngest Dale. “What a pretty one,
Joe!”

“We’ll coax it down. It’s a stray,” his brother said eagerly, “and all
strays are fair game.”

“But it’s lame, Joe,” Roger declared. “See! it can scarcely hop. And it
acts as if all tired out.”

“It’s a carrier, all right,” Joe said. “I bet it’s come a long way.”

The bird, however, would not be coaxed to the ground or into the big
cage. It really did appear exhausted.

“I bet if I could get up there on the stable roof, I could pick it
right up in my hand,” cried Joe. “I’m—I’m a-going—to try it!”

“Oh!” murmured Roger, both his eyes and mouth very round.

Joe was no “blowhard,” as the boys say. When he said he’d do a thing he
did his best to accomplish it. He threw off his thick jacket that would
have hampered him, and kicked aside his overshoes that made his feet
clumsy, and started to go aloft in the stable.

“You go outside and watch, Roger,” he commanded. “There’s no skylight
in this old barn roof—only the cupola, and I can’t get out through
that.”

“How are you going to do it then?” gasped Roger.

“You’ll see,” his brother said with assurance, and began to climb the
hay ladder into the top loft of the building.

Roger ran out just in time to see Joe open the small door up in the
peak of the stable roof. There were water-troughs all around the roof,
for the cattle were supplied with drinking water from cisterns built
under the ground.

A leader ran down each corner of the stable, and one of these was
within reach of Joe Dale’s hands when he swung himself out upon the
door he had opened.

Nobody, except the boys, were about the stable, and this end of
the building could not be seen from the house. Joe had once before
performed a similar trick. He had swung from the door to the
leader-pipe and swarmed down to the ground.

“Look out you don’t tumble, Joe,” advised the eager Roger. But he had
no idea that Joe would do so. The elder brother was a hero in the sight
of the younger lad.

Joe’s skill and strength did not fail him now. He caught the leader,
then the water-trough itself, and so scrambled upon the roof. But at
his last kick some fastening holding the leader-pipe gave way and the
top of it swung out from the corner of the stable.

“Oh, cricky!” yelled Roger. “Lucky you got up there, Joe. That pipe’s
busted. How’ll you get down?”

“Never mind that,” grunted Joe, somewhat breathless, scrambling up the
roof to the ridgepole. “We’ll see about that later.”

The boy reached the ridge and straddled it. There he got his breath and
then hitched along toward the cooing pigeon. It was not frightened by
him, but it certainly was lame and exhausted. Joe picked it up in his
hand and snuggled it into the breast of his sweater.

“But how are you ever going to get down, Joe Dale?” shrilled Roger,
from the ground.

The question was a poser, as Joe very soon found out. That particular
leader had been the only one on the stable that he could reach with any
measure of safety; and now it hung out a couple of feet from the side
of the building and Joe would not have dared trust his weight upon it,
even could he have reached it.

“What are you going to do?” again wailed the smaller lad.

“Aw, cheese it, Roger! don’t be bawling,” advised Joe from the roof.
“Go and get a ladder.”

“There isn’t any long enough to reach up there—you know that,” said
Roger.

Neither he nor Joe observed the fact that, even had there been a
ladder, the smaller boy could not have raised it into place so that Joe
could have descended upon it.

None of the men working on the place was at hand. Ned and Nat were
off on some errand in their car. Secretly, Roger was panic stricken
and might have run for Dorothy, for she was still his refuge in all
troubles.

But Joe was older—and thought himself wiser. “We’ve just got to find a
ladder—_you’ve_ got to find it, Roger. I can’t sit up here a-straddle
of this old roof all day. It’s co-o-old!”

Roger started off blindly. He could not remember whether any of the
neighbors possessed long ladders or not. But as he came down to the
street corner of the White property he saw a red box affixed to a
telegraph pole on the edge of the sidewalk.

“Oh, bully!” gasped Roger, and immediately scrambled over the fence.

He knew what that red box was for. It had been explained to him, and he
had longed for a good reason for experimenting with it. You broke the
little square of glass and pulled down the hook inside—-

That is how Ned and Nat, whizzing homeward in their car, came to join
the procession of the Fire Department racing out of town toward The
Cedars.

“Where’s the fire, Cal?” yelled Nat, seeing a man he knew riding on the
ladder truck.

“Right near your house, Mr. White. At any rate, that was the number
pulled—that box by the corner of your mother’s place.”

“Did you hear that, Ned?” shouted his brother, and Ned, who was at
the wheel, “let her out,” breaking every speed law of the country to
flinders.

The Fire Chief in his red racing car was only a few rods ahead of the
Whites, therefore, when Ned whirled the automobile into the driveway.
They saw a small boy, greatly excited, dancing up and down on the
gravel beside the chief’s car.

“Yep—he’s up on the stable roof, I tell you. We’ve got to use your
extension ladders to get him down,” Roger was saying eagerly. “I didn’t
mean for all of the things to come—the engine, and hose cart, and all.
Just the ladders we wanted,” and Roger seemed amazed that his pulling
the hook of the fire-alarm box had not explained all this at fire
headquarters down town.

There was some excitement, as may well be believed in and about The
Cedars. The Fire Chief was at first enraged; then he, as well as his
men, laughed. They got Joe, still clinging to the stray pigeon, down
from the roof, and then the firemen drilled back to town, reporting a
“false alarm.”

Major Dale, however, sent in a check to the Firemen’s Benefit Fund, and
Joe and Roger were sent to bed at noon and were obliged to remain there
until the next morning—a punishment that was likely long to be engraved
upon their minds.

The incident, however, had broken in upon a very serious conference
between Dorothy Dale and her father. And nowadays their conferences
were very likely to be for the discussion of but one subject:

Garry Knapp and his affairs.

Aunt Winnie, too, had been taken into Dorothy Dale’s confidence. “I
want you both,” the girl said, bravely, “to meet Garry Knapp and decide
for yourselves if he is not all I say he is. And to do that we must get
him to come here.”

“How will you accomplish it, Dorothy?” asked her aunt, still more than
a little confused because of this entirely new departure upon the part
of her heretofore demure niece.

Dorothy explained. Another—a third—letter had come from Lance Petterby.
He had identified Garry Knapp as the Dimples Knapp he had previously
known upon the range. Knapp was about to sell a rundown ranch north of
Desert City and adjoining the rough end of the great Hardin Estate,
that now belonged to Major Dale, to some speculators in wheat lands.
The speculators, Lance said, were “sure enough sharks.”

“First of all have our lawyers out there make Mr. Knapp a much better
offer for his land—quick, before Stiffbold and Lightly close with him,”
Dorothy suggested. “Oh! I’ve thought it all out. Those land speculators
will allow that option they took on Garry’s ranch to lapse. What is a
hundred dollars to them? Then they will play a waiting game until they
make him come to new terms—a much lower price even than they offered
him in New York. He must not sell his land to them, and for a song.”

“And then?” asked the major, his eyes bright with pride in his
daughter’s forcefulness of character, as well as with amusement.

“Have our lawyers bind the bargain with Mr. Knapp and ask him to come
East to close the transaction with their principal. That’s _you_,
Major. Meanwhile, have the lawyers send an expert to Mr. Knapp’s ranch
to see if it is really promising wheat land if properly developed.”

“And then?” repeated her father.

“If it _is_,” said Dorothy, laughing blithely, “when Garry shows up
and you and Aunt Winnie approve of him, as I know you both will, offer
to advance the money necessary to develop the wheat ranch instead of
buying the land.

“That,” Dorothy Dale said earnestly, “will give him the start in
business life he needs. I know he has it in him to make good. He can
expect no fortune from his uncle in Alaska, who is angry with him; he
will _never_ hear to using any of my money to help bring success; but
in this way he will have his chance. I believe he will be independent
in a few years.”

“And, meanwhile, what of you?” cried her aunt.

“I shall be waiting for him,” replied Dorothy with a smile that Tavia,
had she seen it, would have pronounced “seraphic.”

“Major! did you ever hear of such talk from a girl?” gasped Aunt Winnie.

“No,” said her brother, with immense satisfaction, and thumping
approval on the floor with his cane. “Because there never was just such
a girl since the world began as my little captain.

“I want to see this wonderful Garry Knapp—don’t you, Sister? I’m sure
he must be a perfectly wonderful young man to so stir our Dorothy.”

“No,” Dorothy said slowly shaking her head. “I know he is only
wonderful in my eyes. But I am quite sure you and Aunt Winnie will
commend my choice when you have met him—if we can only get him here!”




CHAPTER XXIII

NAT JUMPS AT A CONCLUSION


All this time Tavia and Nat were having anything but a happy life. Nat
would not have admitted it for the world, but he wished he could leave
home and never appear at The Cedars again until Tavia had gone.

On her part, Tavia would have returned to Dalton before the new year
had Dorothy allowed her to have her own way. Dorothy would not hear of
such a thing.

To make the situation worse for the pair of young people so tragically
enduring their first vital misunderstanding, Ned and Jennie Hapgood
were sailing upon a sea of blissful and unruffled happiness. Nat and
Tavia could not help noting this fact. The feeling of the exalted
couple for each other was so evident that even the Dale boys discussed
it—and naturally with deep disgust.

“Gee!” breathed Joe, scandalized. “Old Ned is so mushy over Jennie
Hapgood that he goes around in a trance. He could tread on his own
corns and not know it, his head is so far up in the clouds. Gee!”

“_I_ wouldn’t ever get so silly over a girl—not even our Dorothy,”
Roger declared. “Would you, Joe?”

“Not in a hundred years,” was his brother’s earnest response.

The major admitted with a chuckle that Ned certainly was hard hit.
The time set for Jennie Hapgood to return to Sunnyside Farm came and
passed, and still many reasons were found for the prolongation of her
visit. Ned went off to New York one day by himself and brought home at
night something that made a prominent bulge in his lower right-hand
vest pocket.

“Oh, _oh_, OH! Dorothy!” ejaculated Tavia, for the moment coming out of
her own doldrums. “Do you know what it is? A Tiffany box! Nothing less!”

“Dear old Ned,” said her chum, with a smile.

Ned and Jennie disappeared together right after dinner. Then, an hour
later, they appeared in the drawing-room where the family was assembled
and Ned led Jennie forward by her left hand—the fingers prominently
extended.

“White gold—platinum!” murmured Tavia, standing enthralled as she
beheld the beautifully set stone.

“Set old Ned back five hundred bucks if it did a cent,” growled Nat,
under his breath and keeping in the background.

“Oh, Jennie!” cried Dorothy, jumping up.

But Aunt Winnie seemed to be nearest. She reached the happy couple
before anybody else.

“Ned needn’t tell me,” she said, with a little laugh and a little sob
and putting both arms about Jennie. “Welcome, my daughter! Very welcome
to the White family. I have for years tried to divide Dorothy with the
major; now I am to have at least _one_ daughter of my very own.”

Did she flash a glance at Tavia standing in the background? Tavia
thought so. The proud and headstrong girl was shot to the quick with
the arrow of the thought that Mrs. White had been told by Nat of the
difference between himself and Tavia and that the lady would never come
to Tavia and ask that question on behalf of her younger son that the
girl so desired her to ask.

Never before had Tavia realized so keenly the great chasm between
herself and Jennie Hapgood. Mrs. White welcomed Jennie so warmly, and
was so glad, because Jennie was of the same level in society as the
Whites. Both in blood and wealth Jennie was Ned’s equal.

Tavia knew very well that by explaining to Nat about Lance Petterby’s
letters she could easily bring that young man to his knees. In her
heart, in the very fiber of the girl’s being, indeed, had grown the
desire to have Dorothy Dale’s Aunt Winnie tell her that she, too, would
be welcome in the White family. Now Tavia doubted if Aunt Winnie would
ever do that.

Jennie was to go home to Sunnyside Farm the next day. This final
decision had probably spurred Ned to action. Because of certain
business matters in town which occupied both Ned and Nat at train time
and the fact that Dorothy was busy with some domestic duty, it was
Tavia who drove the _Fire Bird_, the Whites’ old car, to the station
with Jennie Hapgood.

A train from the West had come in a few minutes before the westbound
one which Jennie was to take was due. Tavia, sitting in the car while
Jennie ran to get her checks, saw a tall man carrying two heavy
suitcases and wearing a broad-brimmed hat walking down the platform.

“Why! if that doesn’t look——Surely it can’t be—I—I believe I’ve got ’em
again!” murmured Tavia Travers.

Then suddenly she shot out from behind the wheel, leaped to the
platform, and ran straight for the tall figure.

“Garry Knapp!” she exploded.

“Why—why—Miss Travers!” responded the big young man, smiling suddenly
and that “cute” little dimple just showing in his bronzed cheek. “You
don’t mean to say you live in this man’s town?”

He looked about the station in a puzzled way, and, having dropped his
bags to shake hands with her, rubbed the side of his head as though to
awaken his understanding.

“I don’t understand your being here, Miss Travers,” he murmured.

“Why, _I’m_ visiting here,” she said, blithely. “But _you_——?”

“I—I’m here on business. Or I think I am,” he said soberly. “How’s
your—Miss Dale! _She_ doesn’t live here, does she?”

“Of course. Didn’t you know?” demanded Tavia, eyeing him curiously.

“No. Who—what’s this Major Dale to her, Miss Travers?” asked the young
man and his heavy brows met for an instant over his nose.

“Her father, of course, Mr. Knapp. Didn’t you know Dorothy’s father was
the only Major Dale there _is_, and the nicest man there ever _was_?”

“How should I know?” demanded Garry Knapp, contemplating Tavia with
continued seriousness. “What is he—a real estate man?”

“Why! didn’t you know?” Tavia asked, thinking quickly. “Didn’t I tell
you that time that he was a close friend of Colonel Hardin, who owned
that estate you told me joined your ranch there by Desert City?”

“Uh-huh,” grunted the young man. “Seems to me you _did_ tell me
something about that. But I—I must have had my mind on something else.”

“On _somebody_ else, you mean,” said Tavia, dimpling suddenly. “Well!
Colonel Hardin left his place to Major Dale.”

“Oh! that’s why, then. He wants to buy my holdings because his land
joins mine,” said Garry Knapp, reflectively.

Tavia had her suspicions of the truth well aroused; but all she replied
was:

“I shouldn’t wonder, Mr. Knapp.”

“I got a good offer—leastways, better than those sharks, Stiffbold and
Lightly, would make me after they’d seen the ranch—from some lawyers
out there. They planked down a thousand for an option, and told me to
come East and close the deal with this Major Dale. And it never entered
into this stupid head of mine that he was related to—to Miss Dale.”

“Isn’t that funny?” giggled Tavia. Then, as Jennie appeared from the
baggage room and the westbound train whistled for the station, she
added: “Just wait for me until I see a friend off on this train, Mr.
Knapp, and I’ll drive you out.”

“Drive me out where?” asked Garry Knapp.

“To see—er—_Major_ Dale,” she returned, and ran away.

When the train had gone she found the Westerner standing between his
two heavy bags about where she had left him.

“Those old suitcases look so natural,” she said, laughing at his
serious face. “Throw them into the tonneau and sit beside me in front.
I’ll show you some driving.”

“But look here! I can’t do this,” he objected.

“You cannot do what?” demanded Tavia.

“Are _you_ staying with Miss Dale?”

“Of course I am staying with Doro. I don’t know but I am more at home
at The Cedars than I am at the Travers domicile in Dalton.”

“But wait!” he begged. “There must be a hotel here?”

“In North Birchland? Of course.”

“You’d better take me there, Miss Travers, if you’ll be so kind. I want
to secure a room.”

“Nothing doing! You’ve got to come out to The Cedars with me,” Tavia
declared. “Why, Do—I mean, of course, Major Dale would never forgive me
if I failed to bring you, baggage and all. His friends do not stop at
the North Birchland House I’d have you know.”

“But, honestly, Miss Travers, I don’t like it. I don’t understand it.
And Major Dale isn’t my friend.”

“Oh, _isn’t_ he? You just wait and see!” cried Tavia. “I didn’t know
about your coming East. Of course, if it is business——”

“That is it, exactly,” the young man said, nervously. “I—I couldn’t
impose upon these people, you know.”

“Say! you want to sell your land, don’t you?” demanded Tavia.

“Ye—es,” admitted Garry Knapp, slowly.

“Well, if a man came out your way to settle a business matter, you
wouldn’t let him go to a hotel, would you? You’d be angry,” said Tavia,
sensibly, “if he insisted upon doing such a thing. Major Dale could not
have been informed when you would arrive, or he would have had somebody
here at the station to meet you.”

“No. I didn’t tell the lawyers when I’d start,” said Garry.

“Don’t make a bad matter worse then,” laughed Tavia, her eyes twinkling
as she climbed in and sat back of the wheel. “Hurry up. If you want
to sell your land you’d better waste no more time getting out to The
Cedars.”

The Westerner got into the car in evident doubt. He suspected that
he had been called East for something besides closing a real estate
transaction. Tavia suspected so, too; and she was vastly amused.

She drove slowly, for Garry began asking her for full particulars about
Dorothy and the family. Tavia actually did not know anything about the
proposed purchase of the Knapp ranch by her chum’s father. Dorothy had
said not a word to her about Garry since their final talk some weeks
before.

At a place in the woods where there was not a house in sight, Tavia
even stopped the car the better to give her full attention to Mr. Garry
Knapp, and to talk him out of certain objections that seemed to trouble
his mind.

It was just here that Nat White, on a sputtering motorcycle he
sometimes rode, passed the couple in the automobile. He saw Tavia
talking earnestly to a fine-looking, broad-shouldered young man wearing
a hat of Western style. She had an eager hand upon his shoulder and the
stranger was evidently much interested in what the girl said.

Nat did not even slow down. It is doubtful if Tavia noticed him at all.
Nat went straight home, changed his clothes, flung a few things into a
traveling bag, and announced to his mother that he was off for Boston
to pay some long-promised visits to friends there and in Cambridge.

Nat, with his usual impulsiveness, had jumped at a conclusion which,
like most snap judgments, was quite incorrect. He rode to the railroad
station by another way and so did not meet Tavia and Garry Knapp as
they approached The Cedars.




CHAPTER XXIV

THIN ICE


Dorothy spied the Fire Bird just as it turned in at the entrance gate.
And she identified the person sitting beside her chum, too. Therefore,
she had a few minutes in which to prepare for her meeting with Garry
Knapp.

She was on the porch when the car stopped, and her welcome to the young
Westerner possessed just the degree of cordiality that it should.
Neither by word nor look did she betray the fact that her heart’s
action was accelerated, or that she felt a thrill of joy to think that
the first of her moves in this intricate game had been successful.

“Of course, it would be Tavia’s good fortune to pick you up at the
station,” she said, while Garry held her hand just a moment longer than
was really necessary for politeness’ sake. “Had you telegraphed us——”

“I hadn’t a thought that I was going to run up against Miss Travers or
you, Miss Dale,” he said.

“Oh, then, this is a business visit?” and she laughed. “Entirely? You
only wish to see Major Dale?”

“Well—now—that’s unfair,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “But I told Miss
Travers she might drive me to the hotel.”

“Oh, this will be your hotel while you remain, of course. Father would
not hear of anything else I am sure.”

“I can thank you, then, Miss Dale,” he said quietly and with a sudden
serious mien, “for the chance to sell my ranch at a better price than
those sharks were ready to give?”

“No. You may thank Major Dale’s bump of acquisitiveness,” she said,
laughing at him over her shoulder as she led the way into the house.
“Having so much land already out there, like other great property
owners, he is always looking for more.”

If Garry Knapp was not assured that she was entirely frank upon this
matter, he knew that his welcome was as warm as though he were really
an old friend. He met Mrs. White almost at once, and Dorothy was
delighted by her marked approval of him.

Garry Knapp got to the major by slow degrees. Tavia marveled as she
watched Dorothy Dale’s calm and assured methods. This was the demure,
cautious girl whom she had always looked upon as being quite helpless
when it came to managing “affairs” with members of the opposite sex.
Tavia imagined she was quite able to manage any man—“put him in his
place,” she termed it—much better than Dorothy Dale. But now!

Dorothy quietly sent Joe and Roger out for Mr. Knapp’s bags and told
them to take the bags up to an indicated room. She made no fuss about
it, but took it for granted that Garry Knapp had come for a visit, not
for a call.

The young man from the West had to sit down and talk with Aunt Winnie.
That lady proceeded in her good-humored and tactful way to draw him
out. Aunt Winnie learned more about Garry Knapp in those few minutes
than even Tavia had learned when she took dinner with the young man.
And all the time the watchful Dorothy saw Garry Knapp growing in her
aunt’s estimation.

Ned came in. He had been fussing and fuming because business had kept
him from personally seeing Jennie Hapgood aboard her train. He welcomed
this big fellow from the West, perhaps, because he helped take Ned’s
mind off his own affairs.

“Come on up and dress for dinner,” Ned suggested, having gained Garry
Knapp’s sole attention. “It’s pretty near time for the big eats, and
mother is a stickler for the best bib and tucker at the evening meal.”

“Great Scott!” gasped Garry Knapp in a panic. “You don’t mean dinner
dress? I haven’t had on a swallowtail since I was in college.”

“Tuxedo will do,” Ned said lightly. “If you didn’t bring ’em I’ll lend
you. I’m about as broad as you, my boy.”

Garry Knapp was three or four years older than Ned, and that “my boy”
sounded rather funny. However, the Westerner did not smile. He accepted
the loan of the dinner coat and the vest without comment, but he looked
very serious while he was dressing.

They went down together to meet the girls in the drawing-room. Dorothy
Dale and Tavia had dressed especially for the occasion. Tavia flaunted
her fine feathers frankly; but demure Dorothy’s eyes shone more
gloriously than her frock. Ned said:

“You look scrumptious, Coz. And, of course, Tavia, you are a vision of
delight. Where’s Nat?”

“Nat?” questioned Tavia, her countenance falling. “Is—isn’t he
upstairs?”

“Why, don’t you know?” Dorothy cried. “He’s gone to Boston. Left just
before you came back from the station, Tavia.”

“Well, of all things!” Ned said. “I’d have gone with him if I’d really
believed he meant it. Old grouch! He’s been talking of lighting out for
a week. But I am glad,” he added cordially, looking at Garry Knapp,
“that I did not go. Then I, too, might have missed meeting Mr. Knapp.”

Now, what was it kept Major Dale away from the dinner table that
evening? His excuse was that a twinge or two of rheumatism kept him
from appearing with the family when dinner was called. And yet Dorothy
did not appear worried by her father’s absence as she ordinarily would
have been. Tavia was secretly delighted by this added manifestation
of Dorothy’s finesse. Garry Knapp could not find any excuse for
withdrawing from the house until he had interviewed the major.

As was usual at The Cedars, the evening meal was a lively and enjoyable
occasion. Tavia successfully hid her chagrin at Nat’s absence; but Joe
and Roger were this evening the life of the company.

“The river’s frozen,” sang Roger, “and we’re going skating on it, Joe
and I. Did you ever go skating, Mr. Knapp?” for Roger believed it only
common politeness to bring the visitor into the conversation.

“Sure enough,” laughed Garry Knapp. “I used to be some skater, too.”

“You’d better come,” said Roger. “It’s going to be moonlight—Popeye
Jordan says so, and he knows, for his father lights the street lamps
and this is one of the nights he doesn’t have to work.”

“I hope Popeye hasn’t made a mistake—or Mr. Jordan, either—in reading
the almanac,” Dorothy said, when the laugh had subsided.

“You’d better come, too, Dorothy,” said Joe. “The river’s as smooth as
glass.”

“Let’s all go,” proposed Tavia, glad to be in anything active that
would occupy her mind and perhaps would push out certain unpleasant
thoughts that lodged there.

“Mr. Knapp has no skates,” said Dorothy, softly.

“Don’t let that stop you,” the Westerner put in, smiling. “I can go and
look on.”

“Oh, I guess we can give you a look _in_,” said Ned. “There’s Nat’s
skates. I think he didn’t take ’em with him.”

“Will they fit Mr. Knapp?” asked Tavia.

“Dead sure that nobody’s got a bigger foot than old Nat,” said his
brother wickedly. “If Mr. Knapp can get into my coat, he’ll find no
trouble in getting into Nat’s shoes.”

Ned rather prided himself on his own small and slim foot and often took
a fling at the size of his brother’s shoes. But now, Nat not being
present, he hoped to “get a rise” out of Tavia. The girl, however, bit
her lip and said nothing. She was not even defending Nat these days.

It was concluded that all should go—that is, all the young people then
present. Nat and Jennie’s absence made what Ned called “a big hole” in
the company.

“You be good to me, Dot,” he said to his cousin, as they waited in the
side hall for Tavia to come down. “I’m going to miss Jennie awfully. I
want to skate with you and tell you all about it.”

“All about what?” demanded his cousin, laughing.

“Why, all about how we came to—to—to find out we cared for each other,”
Ned whispered, blunderingly enough but very earnest. “You know, Dot,
it’s just wonderful——”

“You go on, dear,” said Dorothy, poking a gloved forefinger at him.
“If you two sillies didn’t know you were in love with each other till
you brought home the ring the other night, why everybody else in the
neighborhood was aware of the fact æons and æons ago!”

“Huh?” grunted Ned, his eyes blinking in surprise.

“It was the most transparent thing in the world. Everybody around here
saw how the wind blew.”

“You don’t mean it!” said the really astonished Ned. “Well! and I
didn’t know it myself till I began to think how bad a time I was going
to have without Jennie. I wish old Nat would play up to Tavia.”

Dorothy looked at him scornfully. “Well! of all the stupid people who
ever lived, most men are _it_,” she thought. But what she said aloud
was:

“I want to skate with Mr. Knapp, Nedward. You know he is our guest. You
take Tavia.”

“Pshaw!” muttered her cousin as the girl in question appeared and Garry
Knapp and the boys came in from the porch where the Westerner had been
trying on Nat’s skating boots. “I can’t talk to the flyaway as I can to
you. But I don’t blame you for wanting to skate with Knapp. He seems
like a mighty fine fellow.”

Dorothy was getting the family’s opinion, one by one, of the man Tavia
wickedly whispered Dorothy had “set her cap” for. The younger boys were
plainly delighted with Garry Knapp. When the party got to the river
Joe and Roger would scarcely let the guest and Dorothy get away by
themselves.

Garry Knapp skated somewhat awkwardly at first, for he had not been
on the ice for several years. But he was very sure footed and it was
evident utterly unafraid.

He soon “got the hang of it,” as he said, and was then ready to skate
away with Dorothy. The Dale boys tried to keep up; but with one of his
smiles into the girl’s face, Knapp suddenly all but picked her up and
carried her off at a great pace over the shining, black ice.

“Oh! you take my breath!” she cried half aloud, yet clinging with
delight to his arm.

“We’ll dodge the little scamps and then get down to _talk_,” he said.
“I want to know all about it.”

“All about what?” she returned, looking at him with shy eyes and a
fluttering at her heart that she was glad he could not know about.

“About this game of getting me East again. I can see your fine Italian
hand in this, Miss Dale. Does your father really need my land?”

He said it bluntly, and although he smiled, Dorothy realized there was
something quite serious behind his questioning.

“Well, you see, after you had left the hotel in New York, Tavia and I
overheard those two awful men you agreed to sell to talking about the
bargain,” she said rather stumblingly, but with earnestness.

“You did!” he exclaimed. “The sharks!”

“That is exactly what they were. They said after Stiffbold got out West
he would try to beat you down in your price, although at the terms
agreed upon he knew he was getting a bargain.”

“Oh-ho!” murmured Garry Knapp. “That’s the way of it, eh? They had me
scared all right. I gave them an option for thirty days for a hundred
dollars and they let the option run out. I was about to accept a lower
price when your father’s lawyers came around.”

“You see, Tavia and I were both interested,” Dorothy explained. “And
Tavia wrote to a friend of ours, Lance Petterby——”

[Illustration: IT SEEMED TO DOROTHY THAT THEY FAIRLY FLEW OVER THE OPEN
WATER.

  _Dorothy Dale’s Engagement_      _Page 198_
]

“Ah! that’s why old Lance came riding over to Bob Douglass’ place,
was it?” murmured Garry.

“Then,” said Dorothy, bravely, “I mentioned the matter to father,
and he is always willing to buy property adjoining the Hardin place.
Thinks it is a good investment. He and Aunt Winnie, too, have a high
opinion of that section of the country. They believe it is _the_ coming
wheat-growing land of the States.”

Garry’s mind seemed not to be absorbed by this phase of the subject. He
said abruptly:

“Your folks are mighty rich, Miss Dale, aren’t they?”

Dorothy started at this blunt and unusual question, but, after a
moment’s hesitation, decided to answer as frankly as the question had
been put.

“Oh! Aunt Winnie married a wealthy man—yes,” she said. “Professor
Winthrop White. But we were very poor, indeed, until a few years ago
when a distant relative left the major some property. Then, of course,
this Hardin estate is a big thing.”

“Yes,” said Garry, shortly. “And you are going to be wealthy in your
own right when you are of age. So your little friend told me.”

“Yes,” sighed Dorothy. “Tavia _will_ talk. The same relative who left
father his first legacy, tied up some thousands for poor little me.”

Immediately Garry Knapp talked of other things. The night was fine and
the moon, a silver paring, hung low above the hills. The stars were
so bright that they were reflected in the black ice under the skaters’
ringing steel.

Garry and Dorothy had shot away from the others and were now well down
the river toward the milldam. So perfectly had the ice frozen that
when they turned the blades of the skates left long, soaplike shavings
behind them.

With clasped hands, they took the stroke together perfectly. Never had
Dorothy skated with a partner that suited her so well. Nor had she ever
sped more swiftly over the ice.

Suddenly, she felt Garry’s muscles stiffen and saw his head jerk up as
he stared ahead.

“What is it?” she murmured, her own eyes so misty that she could not
see clearly. Then in a moment she uttered a frightened “Oh!”

They had crossed the river, and now, on coming back, there unexpectedly
appeared a long, open space before them. The water was so still that at
a distance the treacherous spot looked just like the surrounding ice.

The discovery was made too late for them to stop. Indeed, Garry Knapp
increased his speed, picked her up in his arms and it seemed to Dorothy
that they fairly flew over the open water, landing with a resonant ring
of steel upon the safe ice beyond.

For the moment that she was held tightly in the young man’s arms, she
clung to him with something besides fear.

“Oh, Garry!” she gasped when he set her down again.

“Some jump, eh?” returned the young man coolly.

They skated on again without another word.




CHAPTER XXV

GARRY BALKS


The major was ready to see Garry Knapp at nine o’clock the next
morning. He was suffering one of his engagements with the enemy
rheumatism, and there really was a strong reason for his having put off
this interview until the shy Westerner had become somewhat settled at
The Cedars as a guest.

Dorothy took Garry up to the major’s room after breakfast, and they
found him well-wrapped in a rug, sitting in his sun parlor which
overlooked the lawns of The Cedars.

The young man from the West could not help being impressed by the fact
that he was the guest of a family that was well supplied with this
world’s goods—one that was used to luxury as well as comfort. Is it
strange that the most impressive point to him was the fact that he had
no right to even _think_ of trying to win Dorothy Dale?

When he had awakened that morning and looked over the luxurious
furnishings of his chamber and the bathroom and dressing room connected
with it, he had told himself:

“Garford Knapp, you are in wrong! This is no place for a cowpuncher
from the Western plains. What little tad of money you can sell your
ranch for won’t put you in any such class as these folk belong to.

“And as for thinking of that girl—Great Scot! I’d make a fine figure
asking any girl used to such luxury as this to come out and share a
shack in Desert City or thereabout, while I punched cattle, or went to
keeping store, or tried to match my wits in real estate with the sharks
that exploit land out there.

“Forget it, Garford!” he advised himself, grimly. “If you can make an
honest deal with this old major, make it and then clear out. This is no
place for you.”

He had, therefore, braced himself for the interview. The major, eyeing
him keenly as he walked down the long room beside Dorothy, made his
own judgment—as he always did—instantly. When Dorothy had gone he said
frankly to the young man:

“Mr. Knapp, I’m glad to see you. I have heard so much about you that I
feel you and I are already friends.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Garry, quietly, eyeing the major with as much
interest as the latter eyed him.

“When my daughter was talking one day about you and the land you had
in the market adjoining the Hardin tract it struck me that perhaps it
would be a good thing to buy,” went on the major, briskly. “So I set
our lawyers on your trail.”

“So Miss Dorothy tells me, sir,” the young man said.

“Now, they know all about the offer made you by those sharpers,
Stiffbold & Lightly. They advised me to risk a thousand dollar option
on your ranch and I telegraphed them to make you the offer.”

“And you may believe I was struck all of a heap, sir,” said the young
man, still eyeing the major closely. “I’ll tell you something: You’ve
got me guessing.”

“How’s that?” asked the amused Major Dale.

“Why, people don’t come around and hand me a thousand dollars every
day—and just on a gamble.”

“Sure I am gambling?” responded the major.

“I’m not sure of anything,” admitted Garry Knapp. “But it looks like
that. I accepted the certified check—I have it with me. I don’t know
but I’d better hand it back to you, Major, for I think you have been
misinformed about the real value of the ranch. The price per acre your
lawyers offer is away above the market.”

“Hey!” exclaimed Major Dale. “You call yourself a business man?”

“Not much of one, I suppose,” said Garry. “I’ll sell you my ranch quick
enough at a fair price. But this looks as if you were doing me a favor.
I think you have been influenced.”

“Eh?” stammered the astounded old gentleman.

“By your daughter,” said Garry, quietly. “I’m conceited enough to think
it is because of Miss Dale that you make me the offer you do.”

“Any crime in that?” demanded the major.

“No crime exactly,” rejoined Garry with one of his rare smiles, “unless
I take advantage of it. But I’m not the sort of fellow, Major Dale, who
can willingly accept more than I can give value for. Your offer for my
ranch is beyond reason.”

“Would you have thought so if another man—somebody instead of my
daughter’s father——” and his eyes twinkled as he said it, “had made you
the offer?”

Garry Knapp was silent and showed confusion. The major went on with
some grimness of expression:

“But if your conscience troubles you and you wish to call the deal off,
now is your chance to return the check.”

Instantly Garry pulled his wallet from his pocket and produced the
folded green slip, good for a thousand dollars at the Desert City Trust
Company.

“There you are, sir,” he said quietly, and laid the paper upon the arm
of the major’s chair.

The old gentleman picked it up, identified it, and slowly tore the
check into strips, eyeing the young man meanwhile.

“Then,” he said, calmly, “_that_ phase of the matter is closed. But you
still wish to sell your ranch?”

“I do, Major Dale. But I can’t accept what anybody out there would tell
you was a price out of all reason.”

“Except my lawyers,” suggested the major.

“Well——”

“Young man, you have done a very foolish thing,” said Major Dale. “A
ridiculous thing, perhaps. Unless you are shrewder than you seem. My
lawyers have had your land thoroughly cruised. You have the best wheat
land, in embryo, anywhere in the Desert City region.”

Garry started and stared at him for a minute without speaking. Then he
sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

“That may be, sir. Perhaps you _do_ know more about the intrinsic value
of my ranch than I do myself. But I know it would cost a mint of money
to develop that old rundown place into wheat soil.”

“Humph! and if you had this—er—_mint_ of money, what would you do?”

“Do? I’d develop it myself!” cried the young man, startled into
enthusiastic speech. “I know there is a fortune there. _You_ are making
big profits on the Hardin place already, I understand. Cattle have gone
out; but wheat has come to stay. Oh, I know all about that! But what’s
the use?”

“Have you tried to raise money for the development of your land?” asked
the major quietly.

“I’ve talked to some bankers, yes. Nothing doing. The machinery and
fertilizer cost at the first would be prohibitive. A couple of crop
failures would wipe out everything, and the banks don’t want land on
their hands. As for the money-lenders—well, Major Dale, you can imagine
what sort of hold _they_ demand when they deal with a person in my
situation.”

“And you would rather have what seems to you a fair price for your land
and get it off your hands?”

“I’ll accept a fair price—yes. But I can’t accept any favors,” said the
young man, his face gloomy enough but as stubborn as ever.

“I see,” said the major. “Then what will you do with the money you get?”

“Try to get into some business that will make me more,” and Garry
looked up again with a sudden smile.

“Raising wheat does not attract you, then?”

“It’s the biggest prospect in that section. I know it has cattle
raising and even mining backed clear across the board. But it’s no game
for a little man with little capital.”

“Then why not get into it?” asked Major Dale, still speaking quietly.
“You seem enthusiastic. Enthusiasm and youth—why, my boy, they will
carry a fellow far!”

Garry looked at him in a rather puzzled way. “But don’t I tell you,
Major Dale, that the banks will not let me have money?”

“I’ll let you have the money—and at a fair interest,” said Major Dale.

Garry smiled slowly and put out his hand. The major quickly took it and
his countenance began to brighten. But what Garry said caused the old
gentleman’s expression to become suddenly doleful:

“I can’t accept your offer, sir. I know that it is a favor—a favor that
is suggested by Miss Dorothy. If it were not for her, you would never
have thought of sending for me or making either of these more than kind
propositions you have made.

“I shall have to say no—and thank you.”




CHAPTER XXVI

SERIOUS THOUGHTS


The young people at The Cedars had taken Garry Knapp right into the
heart of their social life. He knew he was welcome and the hospitality
shown him was a most delightful experience for the young Westerner.

But “business was business.” He could not see wherein he had any right
to accept a favor from Major Dale because Dorothy wished her father to
aid him. That was not Garry’s idea of a manly part—to use the father of
the girl you love as a staff in getting on in the world.

There was no conceit in Garry’s belief that he had tacit permission,
was it right to accept it, to try to win Dorothy Dale’s heart and hand.
He was just as well assured in his soul that Dorothy had been attracted
to him as he was that she had gained his affection. “Love like a
lightning bolt,” Tavia had called Dorothy’s interest in Garry Knapp. It
was literally true in the young man’s case. He had fallen in love with
Dorothy Dale almost at first sight.

Every time he saw her during that all too brief occasion in New York
his feeling for the girl had grown. By leaps and bounds it increased
until, just as Tavia had once said, if Dorothy had been in Tavia’s
financial situation Garry Knapp would never have left New York without
first learning whether or not there was any possible chance of his
winning the girl he knew he loved.

Now it was revealed to him that he had that chance—and bitterly did he
regret the knowledge. For he gained it at the cost of his peace of mind.

It is one thing to long for the object forbidden us; it is quite
another thing to know that we may claim that longed-for object if honor
did not interfere. To Garry Knapp’s mind he could not meet what was
Dorothy Dale’s perfectly proper advances, and keep his own self-respect.

Were he more sanguine, or a more imaginative young man, he might have
done so. But Garry Knapp’s head was filled with hard, practical common
sense. Young men and more often young girls allow themselves to become
engaged with little thought for the future. Garry was not that kind.
Suppose Dorothy Dale did accept his attentions and was willing to wait
for him until he could win out in some line of industrial endeavor that
would afford the competence that he believed he should possess before
marrying a girl used to the luxuries Dorothy was used to, Garry Knapp
felt it would be wrong to accept the sacrifice.

The chances of business life, especially for a young man with the small
experience and the small capital he would have, were too great. To
“tie a girl up” under such circumstances was a thing Garry could not
contemplate and keep his self-respect. He would not, he told himself,
be led even to admit by word or look that he desired to be Dorothy’s
suitor.

To hide this desire during the few days he remained at The Cedars was
the hardest task Garry Knapp had ever undertaken. If Dorothy was demure
and modest she was likewise determined. Her happiness, she felt, was at
stake and although she could but admire the attitude Garry held upon
this momentous question she did not feel that he was right.

“Why, what does it matter about money—mere money?” she said one night
to Tavia, confessing everything when her chum had crept into her bed
with her after the lights were out. “I believe I care for money less
than he does.”

“You bet you do!” ejaculated Tavia, vigorously. “Just at present that
young cowboy person is caring more for money than Ananias did. Money
looks bigger to him than anything else in the world. With money he
could have you, Doro Doodlekins—don’t you see?”

“But he can have me without!” wailed Dorothy, burying her head in the
pillow.

“Oh, no he can’t,” Tavia said wisely and quietly. “You know he can’t.
If you could tempt him to throw up his principles in the matter, you
know very well, Doro, that you would be heartbroken.”

“What?”

“Yes you would. You wouldn’t want a young man dangling after you who
had thrown aside his self-respect for a girl. Now, would you?” And
without waiting for an answer she continued: “Not that I approve of his
foolishness. Some men _are_ that way, however. Thank heaven I am not a
man.”

“Oh! I’m glad you’re not, either,” confessed Dorothy with her soft lips
now against Tavia’s cheek.

“Thank you, ma’am. I have often thought I’d like to be of the hemale
persuasion; but never, no more!” declared Tavia, with vigor. “Suppose
_I_ should then be afflicted with an ingrowing conscience about taking
money from the woman I married? Whe-e-e-ew!”

“He wouldn’t have to,” murmured Dorothy, burying her head again and
speaking in a muffled voice. “I’d give up the money.”

“And if he had any sense or unselfishness at all he wouldn’t let you do
_that_,” snapped Tavia. “No. You couldn’t get along without much money
now, Dorothy.”

“Nonsense——”

“It is the truth. I know I should be hopelessly unhappy myself if I had
to go home and live again just as they do there. I have been spoiled,”
said Tavia, her voice growing lugubrious. “I want wealth—luxuries—and
everything good that money buys. Yes, Doro, when it comes _my_ time to
become engaged, I must get a wealthy man or none at all. I shall be put
up at auction——”

“Tavia! How you talk! Ridiculous!” exclaimed Dorothy. “You talk like a
heathen.”

“Am one when it comes to money matters,” groaned the girl. “I have got
to marry money——”

“If Nat White were as poor as a church mouse, you’d marry him in a
minute!”

“Oh—er—well,” sighed Tavia, “Nat is not going to ask me, I am afraid.”

“He would in a minute if you’d tell him about those Lance Petterby
letters.”

“Don’t you dare tell him, Dorothy Dale!” exclaimed Tavia, almost in
fear. “You must not. Now, promise.”

“I have promised,” her friend said gloomily.

“And see that you stick to it. I know,” said Tavia, “that I could
bring Nat back to me by explaining. But there should be no need of
explaining. He should know that—that—oh, well, what’s the use of
talking! It’s all off!” and Tavia flounced around and buried her nose
in the pillow.

Dorothy’s wits were at work, however. In the morning she “put a flea
in Ned’s ear,” as Tavia would have said, and Ned hurried off to the
telegraph office to send a day letter to his brother. Dorothy did not
censor that telegraph despatch or this section of it would never have
gone over the wire:

 “Come back home and take a squint at the cowboy D. has picked out for
 herself.”




CHAPTER XXVII

“IT’S ALL OFF!”


By this time even Ned, dense as he sometimes showed himself to be, was
aware of how things stood between the handsome stranger from the West
and his cousin Dorothy.

Ned’s heart was particularly warm at this juncture. He spent a good two
hours every forenoon writing a long letter to Jennie.

“What under the sun he finds to write about gets _me_,” declared Tavia.
“He must indite sonnets to her eyebrows or the like. I never did
believe that Ned White would fall so low as to be a poet.”

“Love plays funny tricks with us,” sighed Dorothy.

“Huh!” ejaculated Tavia, wide-eyed. “Do you feel like writing poetry
yourself, Doro Dale? I vum!”

However, to return to Ned, when his letter writing was done he was at
the beck and call of the girls or was off with Garry Knapp for the
rest of the day. Toward Garry he showed the same friendliness that
his mother displayed and the major showed. They all liked the young
man from Desert City; and they could not help admiring his character,
although they could not believe him either wise or just to Dorothy.

The situation was delicate in the extreme. As Dorothy and Garry had
never approached the subject of their secret attachment for each other,
and now, of course, did not speak of it to the others, not even Ned
could blunder into any opening wherein he might “out with his opinion”
to the Westerner.

Garry Knapp showed nothing but the most gentlemanly regard for Dorothy.
After that first evening on the ice, he did not often allow himself
to be left alone in her company. He knew very well wherein his own
weakness lay.

He talked frankly of his future intentions. It had been agreed between
him and Major Dale that the old Knapp ranch should be turned over to
the Hardin estate lawyers when Garry went back West at a price per acre
that was generous, as Garry said, but not so much above the market
value that he would be “ashamed to look the lawyers in the face when he
took the money.”

Just what Garry would do with these few thousands he did not know. His
education had been a classical one. He had taken up nothing special
save mineralogy, and that only because of Uncle Terry’s lifelong
interest in “prospects.”

“I boned like a good fellow,” he told Ned, “on that branch just to
please the old fellow. Of course, I’d tagged along with him on a burro
on many a prospecting trip when I was a kid, and had learned a lot of
prospector’s lore from the dear old codger.

“But what the old prospector knows about his business is a good deal
like what the old-fashioned farmer knows about growing things. He
does certain things because they bring results, but the old farmer
doesn’t know why. Just so with the old-time prospector. Uncle Terry’s
scientific knowledge of minerals wasn’t a spoonful. I showed him things
that made his eyes bug out—as we say in the West,” and Garry laughed
reminiscently.

“I shouldn’t have thought he’d ever have quarreled with you,” said Ned,
having heard this fact from the girls. “You must have been helpful to
him.”

“That’s the reef we were wrecked on,” said Garry, shaking his head
rather sadly.

“You don’t mean it! How?” queried Ned.

“Why, I’ll tell you. I don’t talk of it much. Of course, you understand
Uncle Terry is one of the old timers. He’s lived a rough life and
associated with rough men for most of it. And his slant on moral
questions is not—well—er—what yours and mine would be, White.”

“I see,” said Ned, nodding. “You collided on a matter of ethics?”

“As you might say,” admitted Garry. “There are abandoned diggings
all over the West, especially where gold was found in rich deposits
that can now be dug over and, by scientific methods, made to yield
comfortable fortunes.

“Why, in the early rush the metal, silver, was not thought of! The
miners cursed the black stuff which got in their way and later proved
to be almost pure silver ore. Other valuable metals were neglected,
too. The miners could see nothing but yellow. They were gold crazy.”

“I see,” Ned agreed. “It must have been great times out there in those
early days.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Garry. “For every ounce of gold mined in the old times
there was a man wasted. The early gold mining cost more in men than a
war, believe me! However, that isn’t the point, or what I was telling
you about.

“Some time after I left the university Uncle Terry wanted me to go off
on a prospecting trip with him and I went—just for the holiday, you
understand. These last few years he hasn’t made a strike. He has plenty
of money, anyway; but the wanderlust of the old prospector seizes him
and he just has to pack up and go.

“We struck Seeper’s Gulch. It was some strike in its day, about thirty
years ago. The gold hunters dug fortunes out of that gulch, and then
the Chinese came in and raked over and sifted the refuse. You’d think
there wasn’t ten cents worth of valuable metal left in that place,
wouldn’t you?”

Ned nodded, keenly interested in the story.

“Well, that’s what the old man thought. He made all kinds of jokes
over a squatter’s family that had picketed there and were digging and
toiling over the played out claims.

“It seemed that they held legal title to a big patch of the gulch.
Some sharper had sawed off the claim on them for good, hard-earned
money; and here they were, broke and desperate. Why! there hadn’t been
any gold mined there for years and years, and their title, although
perfectly legal, wasn’t worth a cent—or so it seemed.

“Uncle Terry tried to show them that. They were stubborn. They had to
be, you see,” said Garry, shaking his head. “Every hope they had in the
world was right in that God-forsaken gulch.

“Well,” he sighed, “I got to mooning around, impatient to be gone, and
I found something. It was so plain that I wonder I didn’t fall over it
and break my neck,” and Garry laughed.

“What was it? Not gold?”

“No. Copper. And a good, healthy lead of it. I traced the vein some
distance before I would believe it myself. And the bulk of it seemed
to lie right inside the boundaries of that supposedly worthless claim
those poor people had bought.

“I didn’t dare tell anybody at first. I had to figure out how she could
be mined (for copper mining isn’t like washing gold dust) and how the
ore could be taken to the crusher. The old roads were pretty good, I
found. It wouldn’t be much of a haul from Seeper’s Gulch to town.

“Then I told Uncle Terry—and showed him.”

Ned waited, looking at Garry curiously.

“That—that’s where he and I locked horns,” sighed Garry. “Uncle Terry
was for offering to buy the claim for a hundred dollars. He had that
much in his jeans and the squatters were desperate—meat and meal
all out and not enough gold in the bottom of the pans to color a
finger-ring.”

He was silent again for a moment, and then continued:

“I couldn’t see it. To take advantage of the ignorance of that poor
family wasn’t a square deal. Uncle Terry lost his head and then lost
his temper. To stop him from making any such deal I out with my story
and showed those folks just where they stood. A little money would
start ’em, and I lent them that——”

“But your Uncle Terry?” asked Ned, curiously.

“Oh, he went off mad. I saw the squatters started right and then made
for home. I was some time getting there——”

“You cleaned yourself out helping the owners of the claim?” put in Ned,
shrewdly.

“Why—yes, I did. But that was nothing. I’d been broke before. I got
a job here and there to carry me along. But when I reached home
Uncle Terry had hiked out for Alaska and left a letter with a lawyer
for me. I was the one bad egg in the family,” and Garry laughed
rather ruefully, “so he said. He’d rather give his money to build a
rattlesnake home than to me. So that’s where we stand to-day. And you
see, White, I did not exactly prepare myself for any profession or any
business, depending as I was on Uncle Terry’s bounty.”

“Tough luck,” announced Ned White.

“It was very foolish on my part. No man should look forward to
another’s shoes. If I had gone ahead with the understanding that I
had my own row to hoe when I got through school, believe me, I should
have picked my line long before I left the university and prepared
accordingly.

“I figure that I’m set back several years. With this little bunch of
money your uncle is going to pay me for my old ranch I have got to get
into something that will begin to turn me a penny at once. Not so easy
to do, Mr. White.”

“But what about the folks you steered into the copper mine?” asked Ned.

“Oh, they are making out fairly well. It was no great fortune, but a
good paying proposition and may keep going for years. Copper is away up
now, you know. They paid me back the loan long ago. But poor old Uncle
Terry—well, he is still sore, and I guess he will remain so for the
remainder of his natural. I’m sorry for him.”

“And not for yourself?” asked Ned, slyly.

“Why, I’d be glad if he’d back me in something. Developing my ranch
into wheat land, for instance. Money lies that way, I believe. But it
takes two or three years to get going and lots of money for machinery.
Can’t raise wheat out there in a small way. It means tractors, and
gangplows and all such things. Whew! no use thinking of that now,” and
Garry heaved a final sigh.

He had not asked Ned to keep the tale to himself; therefore, the family
knew the particulars of Garry Knapp’s trouble with his uncle in a short
time. It was the one thing needed to make Major Dale, at least, desire
to keep in touch with the young Westerner.

“I’m not surprised that he looks upon any understanding with Dorothy in
the way he does,” the major said to Aunt Winnie. “He is a high-minded
fellow—no doubt of it. And I believe he is no namby-pamby. He will go
far before he gets through. I’ll prophesy that.”

“But, my dear Major,” said his sister, with a rather tremulous smile,
“it may be years before such an honorable young man as Garry Knapp
will acquire a competence sufficient to encourage him to come after our
Dorothy.”

“Well—er——”

“And they need each other _now_,” went on Mrs. White, with assurance,
“while they are young and can get the good of youth and of life itself.
Not after their hearts are starved by long and impatient waiting.”

“Oh, the young idiot!” growled the major, shaking his head.

Aunt Winnie laughed, although there was still a tremor in her voice.
“You call him high-minded and an idiot——”

“He is both,” growled Major Dale. “Perhaps, to be cynical, one might
say that in this day and generation the two attributes go together! I—I
wish I knew the way out.”

“So do I,” sighed Mrs. White. “For Dorothy’s sake,” she added.

“For both their sakes,” said the major. “For, believe me, this young
man isn’t having a very good time, either.”

Tavia wished she might “cut the Gordian knot,” as she expressed it. Ned
would have gladly shown Garry a way out of the difficulty. And Dorothy
Dale could do nothing!

“What helpless folk we girls are, after all,” she confessed to Tavia.
“I thought I was being so bold, so brave, in getting Garry to come
East. I believed I had solved the problem through father’s aid. And
look at it now! No farther toward what I want than before.”

“Garry Knapp is a—a chump!” exclaimed Tavia, with some heat.

“But a very lovable chump,” added Dorothy, smiling patiently. “Oh,
dear! It must be his decision, not mine, after all. I tell you, even
the most modern of girls are helpless in the end. The man decides.”

Nat came back to North Birchland in haste. It needed only a word—even
from his brother—to bring him. Perhaps he would have met Tavia as
though no misunderstanding had arisen between them had she been willing
to ignore their difficulty.

But when he kissed Dorothy and his mother, and turned to Tavia, she put
out her hand and looked Nat sternly in the eye. He knew better than to
make a joke of his welcome home with her. She had raised the barrier
herself and she meant to keep it up.

“The next time you kiss me it must be in solemn earnest.”

She had said that to Nat and she proposed to abide by it. The old,
cordial, happy-go-lucky comradeship could never be renewed. Nat
realized that suddenly and dropped his head as he went indoors with his
bag.

He had returned almost too late to meet Garry Knapp after all. The
Westerner laughingly protested that he had loafed long enough. He had
to run down to New York for a day or so to attend to some business for
Bob Douglas and then must start West.

“Come back here before you really start for the ‘wild and woolly,’”
begged Ned. “We’ll get up a real house party——”

“Tempt me not!” cried Garry, with hand raised. “It is hard enough for
me to pull my freight now. If I came again I’d only have to—well! it
would be harder, that’s all,” and his usually hopeful face was overcast.

“Remember you leave friends here, my boy,” said the major, when he saw
the young man alone the evening before his departure. “You’ll find no
friends anywhere who will be more interested in your success than these
at The Cedars.”

“I believe you, Major. I wish I could show my appreciation of your
kindness in a greater degree by accepting your offer to help me. But I
can’t do it. It wouldn’t be right.”

“No. From your standpoint, I suppose it wouldn’t,” admitted the major,
with a sigh. “But at least you’ll correspond——”

“Ned and I are going to write each other frequently—we’ve got quite
chummy, you know,” and Garry laughed. “You shall all hear of me. And
thank you a thousand times for your interest Major Dale!”

“But my interest hasn’t accomplished what I wanted it to accomplish,”
muttered the old gentleman, as Garry turned away.

Dorothy showed a brave face when the time came for Garry’s departure.
She did not make an occasion for seeing him alone, as she might easily
have done. Somehow she felt bound in honor—in Garry’s honor—not to
try to break down his decision. She knew he understood her; and she
understood Garry. Why make the parting harder by any talk about it?

But Tavia’s observation as Garry was whirled away by Ned in the car for
the railway station, sounded like a knell in Dorothy Dale’s ears.

“It’s all off!” remarked Tavia.




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE CASTAWAYS


Drifts covered the fences and fitted every evergreen about The Cedars
with a white cap. The snow had come quite unexpectedly and in the arms
of a blizzard.

For two days and nights the storm had raged all over the East. Wires
were down and many railroad trains were blocked. New York City was
reported snowbound.

“I bet old Garry is holed up in the hotel there all right,” said Ned.
“He’d never have got away before the storm.”

Dorothy hoped Garry had not started for the West and had become
snowbound in some train; but she said nothing about it.

It took two full days for the roads to be broken around North
Birchland. And then, of course, to use an automobile was quite
impossible.

The Dale boys were naturally delighted, for there was no school for
several days and snow-caves, snowmen and snow monuments of all kind
were constructed all over the White lawns.

Nor were Joe and Roger alone in these out-of-door activities. The
girls, as well as Ned and Nat, lent their assistance, and Tavia proved
to be a fine snow sculptor.

“Always was. Believe I might learn to work putty and finally become a
great sculptor,” she declared. “At Glenwood they said I had a talent
for composition.”

“What kind of figure do you prefer to sculp, Tavia?” asked Ned, with
curiosity.

“Oh, I think I should just _love_ a job in an ice-cream factory,
turning out works of art for parties and banquets. Or making little
figures on New Year’s and birthday cakes. And then—think of all the
nice ‘eats’!”

“Oh! I’d like to do that,” breathed Roger, with round eyes.

“Now, see,” laughed Dorothy, “you have started Roger, perhaps, in a
career. He does love ice-cream and cake.”

At least the joke started something else if it did not point Roger on
the road to fame as an “ice-cream sculptor.” The boy was inordinately
fond of goodies and Tavia promised him a treat just as soon as ever she
could get into town.

A few days before Tavia had been the recipient of a sum of money from
home. When he had any money himself Mr. Travers never forgot his pretty
daughter’s need. He was doing very well in business now, as well as
holding a political position that paid a good salary. This money she
had received was of course burning a hole in Tavia’s pocket. She must
needs get into town as soon as the roads were passable, to buy goodies
as her contract with Roger called for.

The horses had not been out of the stable for a week and the coachman
admitted they needed exercise. So he was to drive Tavia to town
directly after breakfast. It was washday, however, and something had
happened to the furnace in the laundry. The coachman was general handy
man about the White premises, and he was called upon to fix the furnace
just as Tavia—and the horses—were ready.

“But who’ll drive me?” asked Tavia, looking askance at the spirited
span that the boy from the stables was holding. “Goodness! aren’t they
full of ginger?”

“Better wait till afternoon,” advised Dorothy.

“But they are all ready, and so am I. Besides,” said Tavia with a
glance at Roger’s doleful face, “somebody smells disappointment.”

Roger understood and said, trying to speak gruffly:

“Oh, I don’t mind.”

“No. I see you don’t,” Tavia returned dryly, and just then Nat appeared
on the porch in bearskin and driving gloves.

“Get in, Tavia, if you want to go. The horses need the work, anyway;
and the coachman may be all day at that furnace.”

“Oh—I—ah——” began Tavia. Then she closed her lips and marched down the
steps and got into the cutter. Whatever her feeling about the matter,
she was not going to attract everybody’s attention by backing out.

Nat tucked the robes around her and got in himself. Then he gathered up
the reins, the boy sprang out of the way, and they were off.

With the runners of the light sleigh humming at their heels the horses
gathered speed each moment. Nat hung on to the reins and the roses
began to blow in Tavia’s cheeks and the fire of excitement burn in her
eyes.

How she loved to travel fast! And in riding beside Nat the pleasure of
speed for her was always doubled. Whether it was in the automobile, or
behind the galloping blacks, as now, to speed along the highways by
Nat’s side was a delight.

The snow was packed just right for sleighing and the wildly excited
span tore into town at racing speed. Indeed, so excited were the horses
that Nat thought it better not to stop anywhere until the creatures had
got over their first desire to run.

So they swept through the town and out upon the road to The Beeches.

“Don’t mind, do you?” Nat stammered, casting a quick, sidelong glance
at Tavia.

“Oh, Nat! it’s wonderful!” she gasped, but looked straight ahead.

“Good little sport—the best ever!” groaned Nat; but perhaps she did not
hear the compliment thus wrested from him.

He turned into the upper road for The Beeches, believing it would be
more traveled than the other highway. In this, however, he was proved
mistaken in a very few minutes. The road breakers had not been far on
this highway, so the blacks were soon floundering through the drifts
and were rapidly brought down to a sensible pace.

“Say! this is altogether too rough,” Nat declared. “It’s no fun being
tossed about like beans in a sack. I’d better turn ’em around.”

“You’ll tip us over, Nat,” objected Tavia.

“Likely to,” admitted the young man. “So we’d better both hop out while
I perform the necessary operation.”

“Maybe they will get away from you,” she cried with some fear. “Be
careful.”

“Watch your Uncle Nat,” he returned lightly. “I’ll not let them get
away.”

Tavia was the last person to be cautious; so she hopped out into the
snow on her side of the sleigh while Nat alighted on the other. A sharp
pull on the bits and the blacks were plunging in the drift to one side
of the half beaten track. Tavia stepped well back out of the way.

The horses breasted the deep snow, snorting and tossing their heads.
Their spirits were not quenched even after this long and hard dash from
The Cedars.

The sleigh did go over on its side; but Nat righted it quickly. This,
however, necessitated his letting go of the reins with one hand.

The next moment the sleigh came with a terrific shock into collision
with an obstruction. It was a log beside the road, completely hidden in
the snow.

Frightened, the horses plunged and kicked. The doubletree snapped
and the reins were jerked from Nat’s grasp. The horses leaped ahead,
squealing and plunging, tearing the harness completely from their
backs. The sleigh remained wedged behind the log; but the animals were
freed and tore away along the road, back toward North Birchland.

Tavia had made no outcry; but now, in the midst of the snow cloud that
had been kicked up, she saw that Nat was floundering in the drift.

“Oh, Nat! are you hurt?” she moaned, and ran to him.

But he was already gingerly getting upon his feet. He had lost his cap,
and the neck of his coat, where the big collar flared away, was packed
with snow.

“Badly hurt—in my dignity,” he growled. “Oh gee, Tavia! Come and scoop
some of this snow out of my neck.”

She giggled at that. She could not help it, for he looked really funny.
Nevertheless she lent him some practical aid, and after he had shaken
himself out of the loose snow and found his cap, he could grin himself
at the situation.

“We’re castaway in the snow, just the same, old girl,” he said.
“What’ll we do—start back and go through North Birchland, the beheld of
all beholders, or take the crossroad back to The Cedars—and so save a
couple of miles?”

“Oh, let’s go home the quickest way,” she said. “I—I don’t want to be
the laughing stock for the whole town.”

“My fault, Tavia. I’m sorry,” he said ruefully.

“No more your fault than it was mine,” she said loyally.

“Oh, yes it was,” he groaned, looking at her seriously. “And it always
_is_ my fault.”

“What is always your fault?” she asked him but tremulously and stepping
back a little.

“Our scraps, Tavia. Our big scrap. I _know_ I ought not to have
questioned you about that old letter. Oh, hang it, Tavia! don’t you see
just how sorry and ashamed I am?” he cried boyishly, putting out both
gloved hands to her.

“I—I know this isn’t just the way to tell you—or the place. But my
heart just _aches_ because of that scrap, Tavia. I don’t care how many
letters you have from other people. I know there’s nothing out of the
way in them. I was just jealous—and—and mean——”

“Anybody tell you why Lance Petterby was writing to me?” put in Tavia
sternly.

“No. Of course not. _Hang_ Lance Petterby, anyway——”

“Oh, that would be too bad. His wife would feel dreadfully if Lance
were hung.”

“_What!_”

“I knew you were still jealous of poor Lance,” Tavia shot in, wagging
her head. “And that word proves it.”

“I don’t care. I said what I meant before I knew he was married. _Is_
he?” gasped Nat.

“Very much so. They’ve got a baby girl and I’m its godmother. Octavia
Susan Petterby.”

“Tavia!” Nat whispered still holding out his hands. “Do—do you forgive
me?”

“Now! is this a time or a place to talk things over?” she demanded
apparently inclined to keep up the wall. “We are castaway in the snow.
Bo-o-ooh! we’re likely to freeze here——”

“I don’t care if I do freeze,” he declared recklessly. “You’ve got to
answer me here and now, Tavia.”

“Have I?” with a toss of her head. “Who are _you_ to command _me_, I’d
like to know?” Then with sudden seriousness and a flood of crimson in
her face that fairly glorified Tavia Travers: “How about that request I
told you your mother must make, Nat? I meant it.”

“See here! See here!” cried the young man, tearing off his gloves and
dashing them into the snow while he struggled to open his bearskin coat
and then the coat beneath.

From an inner pocket he drew forth a letter and opened it so she could
read.

“See!” Nat cried. “It’s from mother. She wrote it to me while I was in
Boston—before old Ned’s telegram came. See what she says here—second
paragraph, Tavia.”

The girl read the words with a little intake of her breath:

 “And, my dear boy, I know that you have quarreled in some way and
 for some reason with our pretty, impetuous Tavia. Do not risk your
 own happiness and hers, Nathaniel, through any stubbornness. Tavia
 is worth breaking one’s pride for. She is the girl I hope to see you
 marry—nobody else in this wide world could so satisfy me as your wife.”

That was as far as Tavia could read, for her eyes were misty. She hung
her head like a child and whispered, as Nat approached:

“Oh, Nat! Nat! how I doubted her! She is _so_ good!”

He put his arms about her, and she snuggled up against the bearskin
coat.

“Say! how about _me_?” he demanded huskily. “Now that the Widder White
has asked you to be her daughter-in-law, don’t I come into the picture
at all?”

Tavia raised her head, looked at him searchingly, and suddenly laid her
lips against his eager ones.

“You’re—you’re the _whole_ picture for me, Nat!” she breathed.




CHAPTER XXIX

SOMETHING AMAZING


Now that Garry Knapp had left The Cedars—had passed out of her life
forever perhaps—Dorothy Dale found herself in a much disturbed state of
mind. She did not wish to sit and think over her situation. If she did
she knew she would break down.

She was tempted—oh! sorely tempted—to write Garry Knapp all that was in
her heart. Her cheeks burned when she thought of doing such a thing;
yet, after all, she was fighting for happiness and as she saw it
receding from her she grew desperate.

But Dorothy Dale had gone as far as she could. She had done her best
to bring the man she loved into line with her own thought. She had the
satisfaction of believing he felt toward her as she did toward him. But
there matters stood; she could do no more. She did not let her mind
dwell upon this state of affairs; she could not and retain that calm
expected of Dorothy Dale by the rest of the family at The Cedars. It is
what is expected of us that we accomplish, after all. She had never
been in the habit of giving away to her feelings, even as a schoolgirl.
Much more was expected of her now.

The older people about her were, of course, sympathetic. She would have
been glad to get away from them for that very reason. Whenever Tavia
looked at her Dorothy saw commiseration in her eyes. So, too, with Aunt
Winnie and the major. Dorothy turned with relief to her brothers who
had not much thought for anything but fun and frolic.

Joe and Roger had quite fallen in love with Garry Knapp and talked a
good deal about him. But their talk was innocent enough and was not
aimed at her. They had not discovered—as they had regarding Jennie
Hapgood and Ned—that their big sister was in the toils of this strange
new disease that seemed to have smitten the young folk at The Cedars.

On this very day that Tavia had elected to go to town and Nat had
driven her in the cutter, Dorothy put on her wraps for a tramp through
the snow. As she started toward the back road she saw Joe and Roger
coming away from the kitchen door, having been whisked out by the cook.

“Take it all and go and don’t youse boys be botherin’ me again
to-day—and everything behind because of the wash,” cried Mary, as the
boys departed.

“What have you been bothering Mary for?” asked Dorothy, hailing her
brothers.

“Suet,” said Joe.

“Oh, do come on, Sister,” cried the eager Roger. “We’re going to feed
’em.”

“Feed what?” asked Dorothy.

“The bluejays and the clapes and the snow buntings,” Roger declared.

“With suet?”

“That’s for the jays,” explained Joe. “We’ve got plenty of cracked corn
and oats for the little birds. You see, we tie the chunks of suet up in
the trees—and you ought to see the bluejays come after it!”

“Do come with us,” begged Roger again, who always found a double
pleasure in having Dorothy attend them on any venture.

“I don’t know. You boys have grown so you can keep ahead of me,”
laughed Dorothy. “Where are you going—how far?”

“Up to Snake Hill—there by the gully. Mr. Garry Knapp showed us last
week,” Joe said. “He says he always feeds the birds in the winter time
out where he lives.”

Dorothy smiled and nodded. “I should presume he did,” she said. “He is
that kind—isn’t he, boys?”

“He’s bully,” said Roger, with enthusiasm.

“_What_ kind?” asked Joe, with some caution.

“Just kind,” laughed Dorothy. “Kind to everybody and everything. Birds
and all,” she said. But to herself she thought: “Kind to everybody but
poor little me!”

However, she went on with her brothers. They plowed through the drifts
in the back road, but found the going not as hard as in the woods. The
tramp to the edge of the gully into which the boys had come so near to
plunging on their sled weeks before, was quite exhausting.

This distant spot had been selected because of the number of birds
that always were to be found here, winter or summer. The undergrowth
was thick and the berries and seeds tempted many of the songsters and
bright-plumaged birds to remain beyond the usual season for migration.

Then it would be too late for them to fly South had they so desired.
Now, with the heavy snow heaped upon everything edible, the feathered
creatures were going to have a time of famine if they were not thought
of by their human neighbors.

Sparrows and chicadees are friendly little things and will keep close
to human habitations in winter; but the bluejay, that saucy rascal, is
always shy. He and his wilder brothers must be fed in the woods.

There were the tracks of the birds—thousands and thousands of tracks
about the gully. Roger began to throw out the grain, scattering it
carefully on the snowcrust, while Joe climbed up the first tree with a
lump of suet tied to a cord.

“I got to tie it high,” he told Dorothy, who asked him, “’cause
otherwise, Mr. Knapp says, dogs or foxes, or such like, will get it
instead of the birds.”

“Oh, I see,” Dorothy said. “Look where you step, Roger. See! the gully
is level full of snow. What a drift!”

This was true. The snow lay in the hollow from twenty to thirty feet in
depth. None of the Dales could remember seeing so much snow before.

Dorothy held the other pieces of suet for Joe while he climbed the
second tree. It was during this process that she suddenly missed Roger.
She could not hear him nor see him.

“Roger!” she called.

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded Joe tartly. “You’re scaring the
birds.”

“But Roger is scaring _me_,” his sister told him. “Look, Joe, from
where you are. Can you see him? Is he hiding from us?”

Joe gave a glance around; then he hastened to descend the tree.

“What is it?” asked Dorothy worriedly. “What has happened to him?”

Joe said never a word, but hastened along the bank of the gully. They
could scarcely distinguish the line of the bank in some places and
right at the very steepest part was a wallow in the snow. Something
had sunk down there and the snow had caved in after it!

“Roger!” gasped Dorothy, her heart beating fast and the muscles of her
throat tightening.

“Oh, cricky!” groaned Joe. “He’s gone down.”

It was the steepest and deepest part of the gully. Not a sound came up
from the huge drift into which the smaller boy had evidently tumbled—no
answer to their cries.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dorothy and her brothers had scarcely gone out of sight of the house
when Major Dale, looking from the broad front window of his room,
beheld a figure plowing through the heaped up snow and in at the
gateway of The Cedars. It was not Nat and it was not Ned; at first he
did not recognize the man approaching the front door at all.

Then he suddenly uttered a shout which brought the housemaid from her
dusting in the hall.

“Major Dale! what is it, please? Can I do anything for you?” asked the
girl, her hand upon her heart.

“Great glory! did I scare you, Mina?” he demanded. “Well! I’m pretty
near scared myself. Leastways, I am amazed. Run down and open the door
for Mr. Knapp—and bring him right up here.”

“Mr. Knapp!” cried the maid, and was away on swift feet, for Garry had
endeared himself to the serving people as well as to the family during
his brief stay at The Cedars.

The young man threw aside his outer clothing in haste and ran upstairs
to the major’s room. Dorothy’s father had got up in his excitement and
was waiting for him with eager eyes.

“Garry! Garry Knapp!” he exclaimed. “What has happened? What has
brought you back here, my dear boy?”

Garry was smiling, but it was a grave smile. Indeed, something dwelt in
the young man’s eyes that the major had never seen before.

“What is it?” repeated the old gentleman, as he seized Garry’s hand.

“Major, I’ve come to ask a favor,” blurted out the Westerner.

“A favor—and at last?” cried Major Dale. “It is granted.”

“Wait till you hear what it is—all of it. First I want you to call our
bargain off.”

“What? You don’t want to sell your ranch?” gasped the major.

“No, sir. Things have—well, have changed a bit. My ranch is something
that I must not sell, for I can see a way now to work it myself.”

“You can, my boy? You can develop it? Then the bargain’s off!” cried
the major. “I only want to see you successful.”

“Thank you, sir. You are more than kind—kinder than I have any
reason to expect. And I presume you think me a fellow of fluctuating
intentions, eh?” and he laughed shortly.

“I am waiting to hear about that, Garry,” said the major, eyeing him
intently.

With a thrill in his voice that meant joy, yet with eyes that were
frankly bedimmed with tears, Garry Knapp put a paper into Major Dale’s
hand, saying:

“Read that, Major,—read that and tell me what you think of it.”




CHAPTER XXX

SO IT WAS ALL SETTLED


“What’s this—what’s this, my boy?” cried the major hastily adjusting
his reading glasses. “A telegram? And from the West, eh?”

“A night letter from Bob Douglas. I got it yesterday morning. I’ve been
all this time getting here, Major. Believe me! the railroads are badly
blocked.”

Major Dale was reading the telegram. His face flushed and his eyes
brightened as he read.

“This is authentic, Garry?” he finally asked, with shaking voice.

“Sure. I know Bob Douglas—and Gibson, the lawyer, too. Gibson has been
in touch with the poor old man all the time. I expect Uncle Terry must
have left the will and all his papers with Gibson when he hiked out
for Alaska. Poor, poor old man! He’s gone without my ever having seen
him again.” Garry’s voice was broken and he turned to look out of the
window.

“Not your fault, my boy,” said the major, clearing his throat.

“No, sir. But my misfortune. I know now that the old man loved me or
he would not have made me rich in the end.”

Major Dale was reading the long telegram again. “Your friend, Mr.
Douglas, repeats a phrase of the will, it is evident,” he said softly.
“Your uncle says you are to have his money ‘because you are too honest
to ever make any for yourself.’ Do you believe that, Garry?” and his
eyes suddenly twinkled.

Garry Knapp blushed and shook his head negatively. “That’s just the old
man’s caustic wit,” he said. “I’ll make good all right. I’ve got the
land, and now I’ve got the money to develop it——”

“Major Dale! Where is Miss Dorothy?”

“Gone out for a tramp in the snow. I heard her with the boys,” said the
major, smiling. “I—I expect, Garry, you wish to tell her the good news?”

“And something else, Major, if you will permit me.”

The old gentleman looked at him searchingly. “I am not altogether sure
that you deserve to get her, Garry. You are a laggard in love,” he
said. “But you have my best wishes.”

“You’ll not find me slow that way after _this_!” exclaimed Garry Knapp
gaily, as he made for the door.

Thus it was that, having traced Dorothy and her brothers from the
house, the young Westerner came upon the site of the accident to Roger
just as the girl and Joe discovered the disappearance of the smaller
boy in the deep drift.

“Run for help, Joe!” Dorothy was crying. “Bring somebody! And ropes!
No! don’t you dare jump into that drift! Then there will be two of you
lost. Oh!”

“Hooray!” yelled Joe at that instant. “Here’s Mr. Knapp!”

Dorothy could not understand Garry’s appearance; but she had to believe
her eyesight. Before the young man, approaching now by great leaps, had
reached the spot they had explained the trouble to him.

“Don’t be so frightened, Dorothy,” he cried. “The boy won’t smother in
that snowdrift. He’s probably so scared that——”

Just then a muffled cry came to their ears from below in the drifted
gulch.

“He isn’t dead then!” declared Joe. “How’re we going to get him out,
Mr. Knapp?”

“By you and Miss Dorothy standing back out of danger and letting me
burrow there,” said Garry.

He had already thrown aside his coat. Now he leaped well out from the
edge of the gully bank, turning in the air so as to face them as he
plunged, feet first, into the drift.

It was partially hollowed out underneath—and this fact Garry had
surmised. The wind had blown the snow into the gully, but a hovering
wreath of the frozen element had tempted Roger upon its surface and
then treacherously let him down into the heart of it.

Garry plunged through and almost landed upon the frightened boy. He
groped for him, picked him up in his arms, and the next minute Roger’s
head and shoulders burst through the snow crust and he was tossed by
Garry out upon the bank.

“Oh, Garry!” gasped Dorothy, trying to help the man up the bank and out
of the snow wreath. “What ever should we have done without you?”

“I don’t see what you’re going to do without me, anyway,” laughed the
young man breathlessly, finally recovering his feet.

“Garry!”

She looked at him almost in fear, gazing into his flushed face. She saw
that something had happened—something that had changed his attitude
toward her; but she could not guess what it was.

The boys were laughing, and Joe was beating the snow off the clothing
of his younger brother. They did not notice their elders for the moment.

“How——Why did you come back, Garry?” the girl asked directly.

“I come back to see if you would let such a blundering fellow as I am
tell you what is in his heart,” Garry said softly, looking at her with
serious gaze.

“Garry! What has happened?” she murmured.

He told her quietly, but with a break in his voice that betrayed the
depth of his feeling for his Uncle Terry. “The poor old boy!” he said.
“If he had only showed me he loved me so while he lived—and given me a
chance to show him.”

“It is not your fault,” said Dorothy using the words her father had
used in commenting upon the matter.

They were standing close together—there in the snow, and his arms were
about her. Dorothy looked up bravely into his face.

“I—I guess I can’t say it very well, Dorothy. But you know how I
feel—how much I love you, my dear. I’m going to make good out there on
the old ranch, and then I want to come back here for you. Will you wait
for me, Dorothy?”

“I expected to have to wait much longer than that, Garry,” Dorothy
replied with a tremulous sigh. And then as he drew her still closer she
hid her face on his bosom.

“Lookut! Lookut!” cried Roger in the background, suddenly observing the
tableau. “What do you know about Dorothy and Garry Knapp doing it too?”

“Gee!” growled Joe, in disgust. “It must be catching. Tavia and old
Nat will get it. Come on away, Roger. Huh! they don’t even know we’re
on earth.”

And it was some time before Dorothy Dale and “that cowboy person” awoke
to the fact that they were alone and it was a much longer time still
before they started back for The Cedars, hand in hand.

THE END.




THE DOROTHY DALE SERIES

By MARGARET PENROSE

Author of “The Motor Girls Series”

12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 75 cents, postpaid.


[Illustration: Book]

Dorothy Dale is the daughter of an old Civil War veteran who is running
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  THE MOTOR GIRLS
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BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE

_or Pitching for the Blue Banner_

Joe’s great ambition was to go to boarding school and play on the
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BASEBALL JOE AT YALE

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From a preparatory school Baseball Joe goes to Yale University. He
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_or Making Good as a Professional Pitcher_

In this volume the scene of action is shifted from Yale college to a
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BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE

_or A Young Pitcher’s Hardest Struggle_

From the Central League Joe is drafted into the St. Louis Nationals. A
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_or Making Good as a Twirler in the Metropolis_

How Joe was traded to the Giants and became their mainstay in the box
makes an interesting baseball story.


BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES (_New_)

_or Pitching for the Championship_

A story to set the hearts of all baseball fans to thumping wildly.
The rivalry was of course of the keenest, and what Joe did to win the
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_or The Mystery of Russabaga Camp_

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  Transcriber’s Notes

  pg 10 Changed: Otuside there beside the tracks
             to: Outside there beside the tracks

  pg 22 Changed: A floorwalked hastened forward.
             to: A floorwalker hastened forward.

  pg 32 Changed: like the notes of a coloratura sporano
             to: like the notes of a coloratura soprano

  pg 116 Changed: melodiously a pæn of joy
              to: melodiously a pæan of joy

  pg 117 Changed: sticking out a touseled head
              to: sticking out a tousled head

  pg 117 Changed: Jennie Hapgod peered out
              to: Jennie Hapgood peered out



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOROTHY DALE'S ENGAGEMENT ***