DOROTHY DALE IN
THE CITY

BY
MARGARET PENROSE

AUTHOR OF “DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY,” “DOROTHY DALE AND HER CHUMS,” “DOROTHY DALE’S CAMPING DAYS,” “THE MOTOR GIRLS,” “THE MOTOR GIRLS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

BOOKS BY MARGARET PENROSE

THE DOROTHY DALE SERIES

12mo. Illustrated. Price, per volume, 60 Cents, postpaid

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

THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES

12mo. Illustrated. Price, per volume, 60 Cents, postpaid

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

Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York

Copyright, 1913, by
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

DOROTHY DALE IN THE CITY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE [I. Almost Christmas] 1 [II. Going Home] 10 [III. “Get a Horse!”] 24 [IV. A Real Beauty Bath] 35 [V. Dorothy’s Protege] 41 [VI. The Night Before Christmas] 52 [VII. Real Ghosts] 61 [VIII. The Aftermath] 68 [IX. Just Dales] 76 [X. Sixty Miles an Hour] 85 [XI. A Hold-On in New York] 100 [XII. Human Freight on the Dummy] 108 [XIII. The Shopping Tour] 118 [XIV. The Dress Parade] 132 [XV. Tea in a Stable] 138 [XVI. A Startling Discovery] 149 [XVII. Tavia’s Resolve] 162 [XVIII. Dangerous Ground] 170 [XIX. Thick Ice and Thin] 179 [XX. A Thickened Plot] 187 [XXI. Fright and Courage] 192 [XXII. Captured By Two Girls] 204 [XXIII. Pathos and Poverty] 213 [XXIV. A Young Reformer] 222 [XXV. The Loving Cup] 233 [XXVI. A New Collector] 242

DOROTHY DALE IN THE CITY

CHAPTER I
ALMOST CHRISTMAS

Neither books, papers nor pencils were to be seen in the confused mass of articles, piled high, if not dry, in the rooms of the pupils of Glenwood Hall, who were now packing up to leave the boarding school for the Christmas holidays.

“Going home is so very different from leaving home,” remarked Dorothy Dale, as she plunged a knot of unfolded ribbons into the tray of her trunk. “I’m always ashamed to face my things when I unpack.”

“Don’t,” advised Tavia. “I never look at mine until they have been scattered on the floor for a few days. Then they all look like a fire sale,” and she wound her tennis shoes inside a perfectly helpless lingerie waist.

“I don’t see why we bring parasols in September to take them back in Christmas snows,” went on Dorothy. “I have a mind to give this to Betty,” and she raised the flowery canopy over her head.

“Oh, don’t!” begged Tavia. “Listen! That’s bad luck!”

“Which?” asked Dorothy, “the parasol or Betty?”

“Neither,” replied Tavia. “But the fact that I hear Ned’s voice. Also the clatter of Cologne’s heavy feet. That means the plunge—our very last racket.”

“I hope you take the racket out of this room,” said Dorothy, “for I have some Christmas cards to get off.”

“Let us in!” called a voice on the outer side of the door. “We’ve got good news.”

“Only news?” asked Tavia. “We have lots of that ourselves. Make it something more substantial.”

“Hurry!” begged the voice of Edna Black, otherwise known as Ned Ebony. “We’ll be caught!”

Tavia brought herself to her feet from the Turkish mat as if she were on springs. Then she opened the door cautiously.

“What is it?” she demanded. “Is it alive?”

“It was once,” replied Edna, “but it isn’t now.”

The giggling at the door was punctuated with a struggle.

“Oh, let us in!” insisted Cologne, and pushed past Tavia.

“Mercy!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Whatever is this?”

The two newcomers were now in a heap on the floor, or rather were in a heap on a feather bed they had dragged into the room with them. Quick to scent fun, Tavia turned the key in the door.

“The old darling!” she murmured. “Where did the naughty girls get you?” and she attempted to caress the feather tick in which Edna and Cologne nestled.

“That’s Miss Mingle’s feather bed!” declared Dorothy. “Wherever did you get it?”

“Mingling with other things getting packed!” replied Edna, “and I haven’t seen a little bundle of the really fluffy-duffy kind since they sent me to grandma’s when I had the measles. Isn’t it lovely?”

“No wonder she sleeps well,” remarked Tavia, trying to push Cologne off the heap. “I could take an eternal rest on this.”

“But why was it out in the hall?” questioned Dorothy. “I know Miss Mingle has a weak hip and has to sleep on a soft bed, always.”

“Her room was being made over, and she wanted to see it all alone before she left. She is going to-morrow,” said Edna.

“And to-night?” asked Dorothy.

“She must have a change,” declared Edna, innocently, “and we thought an ordinary mattress would be—more sanitary.”

“You cannot hide her bed in here,” objected Dorothy. “You must take it back.”

“Take back the bed that thou gavest!” sang Tavia, gaily. “How could I part with thee so soon!”

“We did not intend to hide it here, Doro,” said Cologne. “We had no idea of incriminating you. There is a closet in the hall. But just now there are also tittle-tattles in the hall. We are only biding a-wee.”

“Oh, it’s leaking!” exclaimed Edna, as she blew a bunch of feathery down at Dorothy. “What shall we do?”

“Get it back as soon as you can,” advised Dorothy. “Let me peek out!”

Silence fell as Dorothy cautiously put her head out of the door. “No one in sight,” she whispered. “Now is your time.”

Quietly the girls gathered themselves up. Tavia took the end of the bed where the “leak” was. Out in the hall they paused.

“The old feather be—ed!

The de—ar feather be—ed!

The rust-covered be—ed that hung in the hall!”

It was Tavia who sang. Then with one jerk she pushed the bed over the banister!

“Oh!” gasped Edna and Cologne, simultaneously.

“Mercy!” came a cry from below. “Whatever is——”

They heard no more. Inside the room again the girls scampered.

“Right on the very head of Miss Mingle!” whispered Edna, horror-stricken. “Now we are in for it!”

“But she needed it,” said Tavia, in her absurd way of turning a joke into kindness. “I was afraid she wouldn’t find it.”

“Better be afraid she does not find you,” said Dorothy. “Miss Mingle is a dear, but she won’t like leaky feather beds dropped on her.”

“Well, I suppose we will all have to stand for it,” sighed Edna, “though land knows we never intended to decapitate the little music teacher. And she has a weak spine! Tavia Travers, how could you?”

“You saw how simple it was,” replied Tavia, purposely misunderstanding the other. “But do you suppose we have killed her? I don’t hear a sound!”

“Sounds are always smothered in feathers,” said Cologne. “Dorothy, can’t you get the story ready? How did the accident happen?”

“Too busy,” answered Dorothy. “Besides, I warned you.”

“Now, Doro! And this the last day!”

“Oh, please!” chimed in the others.

“I absolutely refuse to fix it up,” declared Dorothy. “I begged you to relent, and now——”

“Hush! It came to! I hear it coming further to!” exclaimed Cologne. “Doro, hide me!”

A rush in the outer hall described the approach of more than one girl. In fact there must have been at least five in the dash that banged the door of Number Nineteen.

“Come on!”

“Hide!”

“Face it!”

“Feathers!”

“Mingle!”

Some of the words were evidently intended to mean more. Snow was scattered about from out of door things, rubbers were thrust off hastily, and the girls, delighted with the prospect of a real row, were radiant with a mental steam that threatened every human safety valve.

“Girls, do be quiet!” begged Dorothy, “and tell us what happened to that feather bed.”

“Nothing,” replied Nita, “it happened to Mingle. She is just now busy trying to get the quills out of her throat with a bottle brush. Betty suggested the brush.”

“And the hall looks like a feather foundry,” imparted Genevieve. “Mrs. Pangborn is looking for someone’s scalp.”

“There! I hear the court martial summons!” exclaimed Edna. “Tavia! You did it.”

The footfall in the hall this time was decided and not clattery. It betokened the coming of a teacher.

A tap at the door came next. Dorothy scrambled over the excited girls, and finally reached the portal.

“The principal would like to have the young ladies from this room report in the office at once,” said the strident voice of Miss Higley, the English teacher. “She is very much annoyed at the misconduct that appeared to come from Room Nineteen.”

“Yes,” faltered Dorothy, for no one else seemed to know how to find her tongue. “There was—an accident. The girls will go to the office.”

After the teacher left the girls gave full vent to their choking sensations. Tavia rolled off the couch, Edna covered her own head in Dorothy’s best sofa cushion, Cologne drank a glass of water that Tavia intended to drink, and altogether things were brisk in Number Nineteen.

“We might as well have it over with,” Edna said, patting the sofa cushion into shape. “I’ll confess to the finding of the plaguey thing.”

“Come on then,” ordered Dorothy, and the others meekly followed her into the hall.

They were but one flight up, and as they looked over the banister they saw below Miss Mingle, Mrs. Pangborn and several others.

“Oh!” gasped Tavia, “they are sprouting pin feathers!”

“Young ladies!” cried Mrs. Pangborn. “What does this mean?”

They trooped down. But before they reached the actual scene of the befeathered hall, a messenger was standing beside Miss Mingle, and the music teacher was reading a telegram.

“I must leave at once!” she said. “Please, Mrs. Pangborn, excuse the young ladies! Come with me to the office! I must arrange everything at once! I have to get the evening train!”

“You must go at once?” queried the head of the school, in some surprise.

“Yes! yes! instantly! Oh, this is awful!” groaned the music teacher. “Come, please do!” And she hurried off, and Mrs. Pangborn went after her.

“Just luck!” whispered Tavia, as she scampered after the others, who quickly hurried to more comfortable quarters. “But what do you suppose ails Mingle?”

“Maybe someone proposed to her,” suggested Edna, “and she was afraid he might relent.”

But little did Dorothy and her chums think how important the message to the teacher would prove to be to themselves, before the close of the Christmas holidays.

CHAPTER II
GOING HOME

“Did you ever see anything so dandy?” asked Tavia. “I think we girls should subscribe to the telegraph company. There is nothing like a quick call to get us out of a scrape.”

“Don’t boast, we are not away yet,” returned Dorothy.

“But I would like to see anything stop me now,” argued Tavia. “There’s the trunk and there’s the grip. Now a railroad ticket to Dalton—dear old Dalton! Doro, I wish you were coming to see the snow on Lenty Lane. It makes the place look grand.”

“Lenty Lane was always pretty,” corrected Dorothy. “I have very pleasant remembrances of the place.”

The girls were at the railroad station, waiting for the train that was to take them away from school for the holidays. There were laughter and merry shouts, promises to write, to send cards, and to do no end of “remembering.”

And, while this is going on, and while the girls are so occupied in this that they are not likely to do anything else, I will take just a few moments to tell my new readers something about the characters in this story.

The first book of this series was called “Dorothy Dale; A Girl of To-Day,” and in that, Dorothy, of course, made her bow. She was the daughter of Major Dale, of Dalton, and, though without a mother, she had two loving brothers, Joe and Roger. Besides these she had a very dear friend in Tavia Travers, and Tavia, when she was not doing or saying one thing, was doing or saying another—in brief, Tavia was a character.

In the tale is told how Dorothy learned of the unlawful detention of a poor little girl, and how she and Tavia took Nellie away from a life of misery.

“Dorothy Dale at Glenwood School,” my second volume, told how our heroine made her appearance at boarding school, where she spent so many happy days, and where she still is when the present story opens. And as for Tavia, she went, too, thanks to the good offices of some of her chum’s friends.

Glenwood School was a peculiar place in many ways, and for a time Dorothy was not happy there, owing to the many cliques and mutual jealousies. But the good sense of Dorothy, and some of the madcap pranks of Tavia, worked out to a good end.

There is really a mystery in my third volume—that entitled “Dorothy Dale’s Great Secret.” It was almost more than Dorothy could bear, at first, especially as it concerned her friend Tavia. For Tavia acted very rashly, to say the least. But Dorothy did not desert her, and how she saved Tavia from herself is fully related.

When Dorothy got on the trail of the gypsies, in the fourth book of the series, called “Dorothy Dale and Her Chums,” she little dreamed where the matter would end. Startling, and almost weird, were her experiences when she met the strange “Queen,” who seemed so sad, and yet who held such power over her wandering people. Here again Dorothy’s good sense came to her aid, and she was able to find a way out of her trouble.

One naturally imagined holidays are times of gladness and joy, but in “Dorothy Dale’s Queer Holidays,” which is the fifth book of this line, her vacation was “queer” indeed. How she and her friends, the boys as well as the girls, solved the mystery of the old “castle”, and how they saved an unfortunate man from danger and despair, is fully set forth. And, as a matter of fact, before the adventure in the “castle” came to an end, Dorothy and her friends themselves were very glad to be rescued.

Mistaken identity is the main theme of the sixth volume, called “Dorothy Dale’s Camping Days.” To be taken for a demented girl, forced to go to a sanitarium, to escape, and to find the same girl for whom she was mistaken, was part of what Dorothy endured.

And yet, with all her troubles, which were not small, Dorothy did not regret them at the end, for they were the means of bringing good to many people. The joyous conclusion, when the girl recovered her reason, more than made up for all Dorothy suffered.

Certainly, after all she had gone through, our heroine might be expected to be entitled to some rest. But events crowded thick and fast on Dorothy. On her return to Glenwood, after a vacation, she found two factions in the school.

Just who was on each side, and the part Dorothy played, may be learned by reading the seventh book of this series, called “Dorothy Dale’s School Rivals.” There was rivalry, none the less bitter because “sweet girl graduates” were the personages involved. But, in the end, all came out well, though at one time it looked as though there would be serious difficulties.

Of course many more characters than Dorothy and Tavia played their parts in the stories. There were Ned and Nat, the sons of Mrs. White, Dorothy’s aunt, with whom, after some years spent in Dalton, Dorothy and her father and brothers went to live, in North Birchlands. Tavia was a frequent visitor there, and Tavia and the good-looking boy cousins—well, perhaps you had better find out that part for yourself.

Dorothy was always making friends, and, once she had made them she never lost them. Not that Tavia did not do the same, but she was a girl so fond of doing the unexpected, so ready to cause a laugh, even if at herself, that many persons did not quite know how to take her.

With Dorothy it was different. Her sweet winsomeness was a charm never absent. Yet she could strike fire, too, when the occasion called for it.

And so now, in beginning this new book, we find our friends ready to leave the “Glen”, as they called it; leave the school and the teachers under whose charge they had been for some time.

Leaving Glenwood was, as Dorothy said, very different from going there. One week before Christmas the place was placed in the hands of the house-cleaners, and the pupils were scattered about over the earth.

Dorothy and Tavia were together in the chair car of the train; and Dorothy, having gathered up her mail without opening it as she left the hall, now used her nail file to cut the envelopes, and then proceeded to see what was the news.

“Oh, Tavia!” she exclaimed, as she looked at the lavender paper that indicated a note from her Aunt Winnie, otherwise Mrs. White. “Listen to this. Aunt Winnie has taken a city house. Of course it will be an apartment——” she looked keenly at the missive, “and it will be on Riverside Drive.”

“Oh, the double-deckers!” exclaimed Tavia. “I can feel the air smart my cheeks,” and she shifted about expectantly. “Let’s take the auto bus—I always did love that word bus. It seems to mean a London night in a fog.”

“Well, I am sure it will mean good times, and I assure you, Tavia, Aunt Winnie has not forgotten you. You are to come.”

“There is only one Aunt Winnie in the world,” declared Tavia, “and she is the Aunty Winnie of Dorothy Dale.” Tavia was never demonstrative, but just now she squeezed Dorothy’s hand almost white. “How can I manage to get through with Dalton? I have to give home at least three snowstorms.”

“We are getting them right now,” said Dorothy. “I am afraid we will be snowbound when we reach the next stop.”

Wheeling about in her chair, Tavia flattened her face against the window as the train smoke tried to hide the snowflakes from her gaze. Dorothy was still occupied with her mail.

“It does come down,” admitted Tavia, “but that will mean a ride for me in old Daddy Brennen’s sleigh. He calls it a sleigh, but you remember, Doro, it is nothing more than the fence rails he took from Brady’s, buckled on the runners he got from Tim, the ragman. And you cannot have forgotten the rubber boot he once used for a spring.”

“It was a funny rig, sure enough,” answered Dorothy, “but Daddy Brennen has a famous reputation for economy.”

“I hope he does not take it into his head to economize on my spinal cord by going over Evergreen Hill,” replied Tavia. “I tried that once in his rattletrap, and we had to walk over to Jordan, and from there I rode home on a pair of milk cans. But Doro,” she continued, “I cannot get over the sudden taking away of Mingle Dingle. Surely the gods sent that telegram to save me.”

“I hope nothing serious has happened at her home,” Dorothy mused. “I never heard anything about her family.”

“You don’t suppose a little mouse of a thing, like that born music teacher, has any family,” replied Tavia irreverently. “I shall ever after this have a respect for the proverbial feather bed.”

“Here is Stony Junction,” Dorothy remarked, as the trainman let in a gust of wind from the vestibuled door to shout out the name of that station. “Madeline Maher gets off here. There, she is waving to us! We should have spoken to her.”

“Never too late,” declared Tavia, and she actually shouted a good-bye and a merry Christmas almost the full length of the car. Dorothy waved her hand and “blew” a kiss, to which the pretty girl who, with the porter close at her heels, was leaving the train for her home, responded. Chairs swung around simultaneously to allow their occupants a glimpse of the girl who had startled them with her shout. Some of the passengers smiled—especially did one young man, whose bag showed the wear usually given in college sports. He dropped his paper, and, not too rudely, smiled straight at Tavia.

“There!” exclaimed she. “See what a good turn does. Just for wishing Maddie a hilarious time I got that smile.”

“Don’t,” cautioned Dorothy, to whom Tavia’s recklessness was ever a source of anxiety. “We have many miles to go yet.”

“‘So much the better,’ as the old Wolfie, in Little Red Riding Hood, said,” Tavia retorted. “I think I shall require a drink of water directly,” and she straightened up as if to make her way to the end of the car, in order to pass the chair of the young man with the scratched-up suitcase.

Dorothy sighed, but at the same time she smiled. Tavia could not be repressed, and Dorothy had given up hope of keeping her subdued.

“Come to think of it,” reflected Tavia, “I never had any permanent luck with the drinking water trick. He looks so nice—I might try being sweet and refined,” and she turned away, making the most absurd effort to look the part.

“Getting sense,” commented Dorothy. “We may now expect a snowslide.”

“And have my hero dig me out,” added the irrepressible one. “Wouldn’t that be delicious! There! Look at that! It is coming down in snowballs!”

“My!” exclaimed Dorothy, “it is awful! I hope the boys do not fail to meet me.”

“Oh, if they didn’t, you would be all right,” said Tavia. “They serve coffee and rolls at North Birchland Station on stormy nights.”

“I declare!” exclaimed Dorothy, “that young man is a friend of Ned’s! I met him last Summer, now I remember.”

“I knew I would have good luck when I played the sweet-girl part,” said Tavia, with unhidden delight. “Go right over and claim him.”

“Nonsense,” replied Dorothy, while a slight blush crept up her forehead into her hair. “We must be more careful than ever. Boys may pretend to like girls who want a good time, but my cousins would never tolerate anything like forwardness.”

“Only where they are the forwarders,” persisted Tavia. “Did not the selfsame Nat, brother to the aforesaid Ned——”

As if the young man in front had at the same time remembered Dorothy, he left his seat and crossed the aisle to where the girls sat. His head was uncovered, of course, but his very polite manner and bow amply made up for the usual hat raising.

“Is not this Miss Dale?” he began, simply.

“Yes,” answered Dorothy, “and this Mr. Niles?”

“Same chap,” he admitted, while Tavia was wondering why he had not looked at her. “Perhaps,” she thought, “he will prove too nice.”

“I was just saying to my friend,” faltered Dorothy, “that I hope nothing will prevent Ned and Nat from meeting me. This is quite a storm.”

“But it makes Christmas pretty,” he replied, and now he did deign to look at Tavia. Dorothy, quick to realize his friendliness, immediately introduced the two.

It was Tavia’s turn to blush—a failing she very rarely gave in to. Perhaps some generous impulse prompted the gentleman who occupied the chair ahead to leave it and make his way toward the smoking room. This gave Mr. Niles a chance to sit near the girls.

“We expect a big time at Birchland this holiday,” he said. “Your cousins mentioned you would be with us.”

“Yes, they cannot get rid of me,” Dorothy replied, in that peculiar way girls have of saying meaningless things. “I am always anxious to get to the Cedars—to see father and our boys, and Aunt Winnie, of course. I only wish Tavia were coming along,” and she made a desperate attempt to get Tavia into the conversation.

“Home is one of the Christmas tyrannies,” the young man said. “If it were not Christmas some of us might forget all about home.”

Still Tavia said not a single word. She now felt hurt. He need not have imagined she cared for his preaching, she thought. And besides, his tie needed pressing, and his vest lacked the top button. Perhaps he had good reasons for wanting to get home to his “Ma,” she was secretly arguing.

“You live in Wildwind—not far from the Cedars; do you not?” Dorothy asked.

“I did live there until last Fall,” he replied. “But mother lost her health, and has gone out in the country, away from the lake. We are stopping near Dalton.”

Tavia fairly gasped at the word “Dalton.”

“Then why don’t you go home for Christmas?” she blurted out.

“I am going to mother’s place to get her first,” he said. “Then, if she feels well enough, we will come back to the Birchlands.”

“My friend lives at Dalton,” Dorothy exclaimed, casting a look of admiration at the flushing Tavia.

“Indeed?” he replied. “That’s my station. I ride back from there. I am glad to have met someone who knows the place. I was fearful of being snowbound or station-bound, as I scarcely know the locality.”

“I expect to ride in Daddy Brennen’s sleigh,” said Tavia, with an effort. “He is the only one to know on a snowy night at Dalton.”

“Then perhaps you will take pity on a stranger, and introduce him to Daddy and his sleigh,” the youth replied. “Even a bad snowstorm may have its compensations.”

Tavia hated herself for thinking he really was nice. She was not accustomed to being ignored, and did not intend to forget that he had slighted her.

“I almost envy you both,” said Dorothy, good humoredly. “Just see it snow! I can see you under Daddy’s horse blanket.”

“It’s surely a horse blanket,” replied Tavia. “We cannot count on his having a steamer rug.”

“I suppose,” said Mr. Niles, “the sleigh answers all stage-coach purposes out that way?”

“As well as freight and express,” returned Dorothy. “Dear old Dalton! I have had some good times out there!”

“Why don’t you come out now, Doro?” asked Tavia, mischievously. “There may be some good times left.”

The gentleman who had vacated the seat taken by Mr. Niles was now coming back. This, of course, was the signal for the latter to leave.

“We are almost at the Birchlands!” he said, “I hope, Miss Dale, that those boy cousins of yours do not get buried in the snow, and leave you in distress. I remember that auto of theirs had a faculty for doing wild things.”

“Oh, yes. We had more than one adventure with the Fire Bird. But I do not anticipate any trouble to-night,” said Dorothy. “I heard from Aunt Winnie this morning.”

With a word about seeing them before the end of their journey, he took his chair, while Tavia sat perfectly still and silent, for, it seemed to Dorothy, the first time in her life.

“What is it?” she asked. “Don’t you feel well, Tavia?”

“I feel like bolting. I have a mind to get off at Bridgeton. Fancy me riding with that angel!”

“I’m sure he is very nice,” Dorothy said, in a tone of reproof. “I should think you would be glad to have such pleasant company.”

“Tickled to death!” replied Tavia, mockingly.

“I’m sure you will have some adventure,” declared Dorothy. “They always begin that way.”

“Do they? Well, if I fall in love with him, Doro, I’ll telegraph to you,” and Tavia helped her friend on with hat and coat, for the Birchlands had already been announced.

CHAPTER III
“GET A HORSE!”

“Hello there, Coz!” shouted Nat White, as Dorothy stepped from the train. “And there’s Tavia—and well! If it isn’t Bob Niles!”

“Yes,” said Dorothy, postponing further greetings until the train should pull out, and Tavia’s last hand-wave be returned. “We met him coming up, and he goes to Dalton.”

“Well I’ll be jiggered! And he has Tavia for company!” exclaimed the young man, who for years had regarded Tavia as his particular property, as far as solid friendship was concerned.

“And Tavia has already vowed to be mean to him,” said Dorothy, as she now pressed her warm cheek against that of her cousin, the latter’s being briskly red from the snowy air. “She would scarcely speak to him on the train.”

“A bad sign,” said Nat, as he helped Dorothy with her bag. “There are the Blakes. May as well ask them up; their machine does not seem to be around.”

The pretty little country station was gay with holiday arrivals, and among them were many known to Dorothy and her popular cousin. The Blakes gladly accepted the invitation to ride over in the Fire Bird, their auto having somehow missed them.

“You look—lovely,” Mabel Blake complimented Dorothy.

“Doesn’t she?” chimed in Mabel’s brother, at which Dorothy buried her face deeper in her furs. Nat cranked up; and soon the Fire Bird was on its way toward the Cedars, the country home of Mrs. Nathaniel White, and her two sons, Nat and Ned. Mrs. White was the only sister of Major Dale, Dorothy’s father, and the Dale family, Dorothy and her brothers, Joe and little Roger, had lately made their home with her.

It lacked but a few days of Christmas, and the snowstorm added much to the beauty of the scene, while the cold was not so severe as to make the weather unpleasant. All sorts of happy remembrances were recalled between the occupants of the automobile, as it bravely made its way through drifts and small banks.

“Oh, there’s old Peter!” exclaimed Dorothy, as a man, his stooped shoulders hidden under a load of evergreens, trudged along.

“And such a heavy burden,” added Mabel. “Couldn’t we give him a lift?”

Nat slowed up a little to give the old man more room in the roadway. “Those Christmas trees are poor company in a machine,” he said. “I have tried them before.”

“But it is so hard for him to travel all the way to the village?” pleaded Dorothy. “We could put his trees on back, and he could——”

“Sit with you and Mabel?” and Ted Blake laughed at the idea.

“No, you could do that?” retorted Dorothy, “and Peter could ride with Nat. Please, Nat——”

“Oh, all right, Coz, if it will make you happy. I wish, sometimes, I were lame, halt and old enough—to know.” Whereat he stopped the machine and insisted on old Peter doing as the girls had suggested.

It was no easy matter to get the trees, and the bunches of greens, securely fastened to the back of the auto, but it was finally accomplished. Peter was profuse in his thanks, for the greens had been specially ordered, he said, and he was already late in delivering them.

“Which way do you go?” asked Nat.

“Out to the Squire’s,” replied Peter. “But that road is soft, I wouldn’t ask you take it.”

“Oh, I guess we can make it,” proposed Nat. “The Fire Bird is not quite a locomotive.”

“She goes like a bird, sure enough,” affirmed Peter. “But that road is full of ditches.”

“We will try them, at any rate,” insisted Nat, as he turned from the main road to a narrow stretch of white track that cut through woods and farm lands.

“If we are fortunate enough not to meet anything,” said Dorothy. “But I have always been afraid of a single road, bound with ditches.”

“Of course,” growled Nat, “there comes Terry with his confounded cows.”

Plowing along, his head down and his whip in hand came Terry, the half-witted boy who, Winter and Summer, drove the cows from their field or barn to the slaughter house. He never raised his head as Nat tooted the horn, and by the time the machine was abreast of the drove of cattle, Nat was obliged to make a quick swerve to avoid striking the animals.

“Oh!” gasped both Dorothy and Mabel. The car lunged, then came to a sudden stop, while the engine still pounded to get ahead.

“Hang the luck!” groaned Nat, vainly trying to start the car, which was plainly stalled.

“I told you,” commented Peter, inappropriately. “This here road——”

“Oh, hang the road!” interrupted Nat. “It was that loon—Terry.”

As the young man spoke Terry passed along as mutely as if nothing had happened.

“I’d like to try that whip on him, to see if I could wake him up,” said Ted, as he leaped out after Nat to see what could be done to get the car back on the road.

But it was an impossible task. Pushing, pulling, prying with fence rails—all efforts left the big, red car stuck just where it had floundered.

“I know,” spoke Peter, suddenly. “I’ll get Sanders’s horse.”

“Sanders wouldn’t lend his horse to pull a man out of a ditch,” said Nat. “I’ve asked him before.”

“That’s where you made a mistake,” replied Peter. “I won’t ask him,” and he awkwardly managed to get out of the car, and was soon out on the road and making his way across the snow-covered fields.

“We may be tried for horse-stealing next,” remarked Ted, grimly. “Girls, are you perishing?”

“Not a bit of it,” declared Dorothy. “This snow is warm rather than cold.”

“My face is burning,” insisted Mabel. “But I do hope old Sanders does not set his dogs on us.”

“He’s as deaf as a post,” Ted said. “That’s a blessing—this time, at least.”

“There goes Peter in the barn,” Dorothy remarked. “He has got that far safely, at any rate.”

A strained silence followed this announcement. Yes, Peter had gone into the barn. It seemed night would come before he could possibly secure the old horse, and get to the roadway to give the necessary pull to the stalled Fire Bird. They waited, eagerly watching the barn door. Finally it opened. Yes, Peter was coming, leading the horse.

“Now!” said Peter, standing with an emergency rope ready, “if only he gets past the house——”

He stopped. The door of the snow-covered cottage opened, and there stood the unapproachable Sanders.

“Oh!” gasped Mabel. “Now we are in for it!”

“Then,” said Dorothy, “let us be ready for it. I’ll prepare the defence,” and before they realized what she was about to do she had selected one of the very choicest Christmas trees, and with it on her fur-covered shoulder, actually started up the box-wood lined walk to where the much-dreaded Sanders was standing, ready to mete out vengeance on the man who had dared to enter his barn, and take from it his horse.

“Oh Mr. Sanders!” called Dorothy. “Have you that dear little grand-daughter with you? The pretty one we had at the church affair last year?”

“You mean Emily?” he drawled. “Yep, she’s here, but——”

“Then, you wonder why we have taken your horse? And why we were stalled here?” The others could hear her from the roadway. They could see, also, that Sanders had stopped to listen. “Now we want Emily to have a Christmas tree, all her own,” went on Dorothy, “and Peter is good enough to donate it. But our machine—those cars are not like horses,” she almost shouted, as Sanders being deaf, and watching the inexorable Peter leading his horse away, had cause to be aroused from his natural surprise. “After all,” persisted Dorothy, “a horse is the best.”

By this time Peter was outside the big gate. Sanders made a move as if to follow, when Dorothy almost dropped the clumsy tree.

“Oh, please take it!” she begged. “I want to see Emily while they are towing the machine out. It’s a lucky thing it happened just here, and that you are kind enough to let us have your horse.”

“Well what do you think of that!” exclaimed Ted, in a voice loud enough for those near him to hear. “Of all the clever tricks!”

“Oh, depend on Doro for cleverness,” replied Nat, proudly. “You just do your part, Ted, and make this rope fast.”

Mabel stood looking on in speechless surprise. She saw now that Dorothy and old Sanders were entering the cottage. Dorothy was first, and the man, with the Christmas tree, followed close behind her. The boys with Peter were busy with rope, horse and auto. Soon they had the necessary connection made, with Nat at the wheel, and all were tugging with might and main to get the Fire Bird free from the ditch.

If there is anything more nerve-racking than such an attempt, it must be some other attempt at a balking auto. Would it move, or would it sink deeper into the mud that lay hidden beneath the newly-fallen snow?

Nat turned the wheel first this way and then that. Ted had his weight pressed against the rear wheel of the machine, while Peter coaxed and led the horse. Suddenly the old horse, as if desperate, gave a jerk and pulled the Fire Bird clear out into the roadway!

SUDDENLY THE OLD HORSE, AS IF DESPERATE, GAVE A JERK AND PULLED THE FIRE BIRD CLEAR.

“Hurrah!” yelled Ted, bounding through the snow.

“Great stunt!” corroborated Nat. “Peter, you are all right!”

“Peter did some,” replied the old man, freeing the horse from the rope that held him to the machine; “but that young lady—if she hadn’t kept Sanders busy—we might all have been arrested for horse-stealing.”

“She knew his weak spot,” agreed Nat. “That little Emily seems to be the one weak and soft spot in old Sanders’s life.”

“I had better go up and see what’s going on,” suggested Mabel, as everything seemed about in readiness to start off again.

“Good idea,” assented her brother, “he might be eating her up.”

Mabel rather timidly found her way up to the cottage. It was already dusk, but the light of a dim lamp showed her the way, as it gleamed through a gloomy window, onto the glistening snow.

“Won’t it be perfectly lovely, Emily?” she heard Doro saying, as she saw her with her arms about a little red-haired girl, both sitting on a sofa, while Sanders attempted to prop the Christmas tree up in a corner, bracing it with a wooden chair. Mabel raised the latch without going through the formality of knocking. As she entered the room, all but Dorothy started in surprise.

“This is my friend,” Dorothy hurried to explain, “it is she who is going to help me trim the tree up for Emily. We will come to-morrow,” and she rose to leave. “Mabel will fetch the doll, Emily. That is, of course, if we can persuade Santa Claus to give us just the kind we want,” she tried to correct.

“A baby dolly—with long hair and a white dress,” Emily ordered. “And I want eyelashes.”

“Perticular,” said Sanders, with a proud look at the child, who, as the boys had said, made up the one tender spot in his life. “If her ma’s cold is better, she is coming up herself.”

“Is she sick?” Emily ventured, glad to be able to say something intelligent.

“Yep,” replied the old man, sadly. “She’s been sick a long time. I fetched Emily over this afternoon in the sleigh.”

“Well, we are so much obliged,” remarked Dorothy. “And good-bye, Emily. You’ll have everything ready for Santa Claus; won’t you?”

“I’ve got my parlor set from last year,” said the child, “and mamma says Santa Claus always likes to see the other things, to know we took care of them.”

“Thanks, Sanders,” called Peter, at the window. “The horse is as good as ever. Don’t sell him without giving me a chance. I could do something if I owned a mare like that.”

“All right,” called back Sanders, whose pride was being played upon. “He might be worse. Did you put her in the far stall?”

“Just where I got her. And I tell you, Sanders, even a horse can play at Christmas. Only for him I never could get those trees to town.”

“And only for Peter,” put in Dorothy, “we could not have gotten Emily her tree. Now that’s how a horse can turn Santa Claus. Good-bye, Mr. Sanders, you may expect us before Christmas.”

And then the two girls followed the chuckling Peter back to the Fire Bird, where the boys impatiently awaited them, to complete the delayed party bound for home, and for the Christmas holidays.

CHAPTER IV
A REAL BEAUTY BATH

“This is some,” remarked Bob Niles, before he knew what he was talking about. They had just been ensconsed in Daddy Brennen’s sleigh. Tavia was beside him—that is, she was as close beside him as she was beside Daddy Brennen, but the real fact was, that in this sleigh, no one could be beside anyone else—it was ever a game of toss and catch. But that was not Daddy’s fault. He never stopped calling to his horse, or pulling at the reins. It must have been the roads, yet everyone paid taxes in Dalton Township.

“Don’t boast,” Tavia answered, adjusting herself anew to the last jolt, “this never was a sleigh to boast of, and it seems to be worse than ever now. There!” she gasped, as she almost fell over the low board that outlined the edge, “one more like that, and I will be mixed up with the gutter.”

“Perhaps this is a safer place,” Bob ventured. “I seem to stay put pretty well. Won’t you change with me?”

“No, thanks,” Tavia answered, good-humoredly. “When Daddy assigns one to a seat one must keep it.”

“Nice clean storm,” Daddy called back from the front. “I always like a white Christmas.”

“Yes,” Tavia said, “looks as if this is going to be white enough. But what are you turning into the lane for, Daddy?”

“Promised Neil Blair I’d take his milk in for him. He can’t get out much in storms—rheumatism.”

“Oh,” Tavia ejaculated. Then to Bob: “How we are going to ride with milk cans is more than I can see.”

“The more the merrier,” Bob replied, laughing. “I never had a better time in my life. This beats a straw ride.”

“Oh, we have had them too, with Daddy,” she told him. “Doro and our crowd used to have good times when she lived in Dalton.”

“No doubt. This is the farmhouse, I guess,” Bob added, as the sleigh pulled up to a hill.

“Yes, this is Neil’s place,” Tavia said. “And there comes Mrs. Blair with a heavy milk can.”

“Oh, I must help her with that,” offered the young man. “I suppose our driver has to take care of his speedy horse.”

Disentangling himself from the heavy blankets, Bob managed to alight in time to take the milk can from the woman, who stood with it at the top of the hill.

“Oh, thank you, sir!” she panted. “The cans seem to get heavier, else I am getting lazy. But Neil had such a twinge, from this storm, that I wouldn’t let him out.”

“And did you do all the milking?” Tavia asked, as Bob managed to place the can in the spot seemingly made for it, beside Daddy.

“Certainly. Oh, how do you do, Tavia? How fine you look; I’m glad to see you home for Christmas,” Mrs. Blair assured the girl.

“Thank you. I’m glad to get home.”

“Fetchin’ company?” with a glance at young Niles.

“No, he’s going farther on,” and Tavia wondered why it was so difficult for her to make such a trifling remark.

“Well, I’m glad he came this way, at any rate,” the woman continued. “But Daddy will be goin’ without the other can,” and she turned off again in the direction of the barn.

“Are there more?” Bob asked Tavia, cautiously.

“I’m afraid so,” she replied. “But I guess she can manage them.”

“My mother would disown me if she knew I let her,” Bob asserted, bravely. “This is an experience not in the itinerary,” and he scampered up the hill, and made for the barn after Mrs. Blair.

Tavia could not help but admire him. After all, she thought, a good-looking lad could be useful, if only for carrying milk cans.

“And has that young gent gone after the can?” asked Daddy, as if just awaking from some dream.

“Yes,” Tavia replied, rather sharply. “He wouldn’t let Mrs. Blair carry such a heavy thing.”

“Well, she’s used to it,” Daddy declared. At the same time he did disturb himself sufficiently to get out and prepare to put the second can in its place.

A college boy, in a travelling suit, carrying a huge milk can through the snow, Tavia thought rather a novel sight, but Bob showed his training, and managed it admirably.

“I’ll put her in,” offered Daddy, “I didn’t know you went after it.”

“So kind of him,” remarked Mrs. Blair, “but he would have it. Thank you, Daddy, for stopping. Neil’ll make it all right with you.”

Daddy was standing up in the sleigh, the can in his hands, “I think,” he faltered, “I’ll have to set this down by you, Miss Travers,” he decided.

“All right,” Tavia agreed, making room at her feet.

He lifted the can high enough to get it over the back of the seat. It was heavy, and awkward, and he leaned on the rickety seat trying to support himself. The weight was too much for the board, and before Bob could get in to help him, and before Tavia could get herself out of the way, the can tilted and the milk poured from it in a torrent over the head, neck and shoulders of Tavia!

“Oh, mercy!” she yelled. “My new furs!”

“Save the milk,” growled Daddy.

“Jump up!” Bob commanded Tavia. “Let it run off if it will.”

But Tavia was either too disgusted, or too surprised, to “jump up.” Instead she sat there, fixing a frozen look at the unfortunate Daddy.

“My milk!” screamed Mrs. Blair. “A whole can full!”

“Was it ordered?” Bob asked, who by this time had gotten Tavia from under the shower.

“No,” she said hesitatingly, “but someone would have took it for Christmas bakin’.”

“Then let us have it,” offered Bob, generously. “If I had kept my seat perhaps it would not have happened.”

“Nonsense,” objected Tavia, “it was entirely Daddy’s fault.”

But Daddy did not hear—he was busy trying to save the dregs in the milk can.

“What’s it worth?” persisted Bob.

“Two dollars,” replied Mrs. Blair, promptly.

Bob put his hand in his pocket and took out two bills. He handed them to the woman.

“There,” he said, “it will be partly a Christmas present. I only hope my—friend’s furs will not be ruined.”

“Milk don’t hurt,” Mrs. Blair said, without reason. “Thank you, sir,” she added to Bob. “This is better than ten that’s comin’. And land knows we needed it to-night.”

“I’ve lost time enough,” growled Daddy. “And that robe is spoiled. Next time I carry milk cans I’ll get a freight car.”

“And the next time I take a milk beauty bath,” said Tavia, “I’ll wear old clothes.” But as Bob climbed in again, and Tavia assured him her furs were not injured, she thought of Dorothy’s prediction that she, Tavia, was about to have an adventure when she met Bob Niles.

“I’ll have something to tell Dorothy,” she remarked aloud.

“And I’ll have news for Nat,” slily said Bob.

CHAPTER V
DOROTHY’S PROTEGE

“Well, what do you think of that!”

“Well, what do you think of this!”

It was Nat who spoke first, and Dorothy who echoed. They were both looking at letters—from Tavia and from Bob.

“I knew Bob would find her interesting,” said Nat, with some irony in his tone.

“And I knew she would finally like him,” said Dorothy, significantly.

“Bob has a way with girls,” went on Nat, “he always takes them slowly—it’s the surest way.”

“But don’t you think Tavia is very pretty? Everyone at school raves about her,” Dorothy declared with unstinted pride, for Tavia’s golden brown hair, and matchless complexion, were ever a source of pride to her chum.

“Of course she’s pretty,” Nat agreed. “Wasn’t it I who discovered her?”

Dorothy laughed, and gave a lock of her cousin’s own brown hair a twist. She, as well as all their mutual friends, knew that Nat and Tavia were the sort of chums who grow up together and cement their friendship with the test of time.

“Come to think of it,” she replied, “you always did like red-headed girls.”

“Now there’s Mabel,” he digressed, “Mabel has hair that seems a misfit—she has blue eyes and black hair. Isn’t that an error?”

“Indeed,” replied Dorothy, “that is considered one of the very best combinations. Rare beauty, in fact.”

“Well, I hope she is on time for the Christmas-tree affair out at Sanders’s, whatever shade her hair. I don’t see, Doro, why you insist on going away out there to put things on that tree. Why not ask the Sunday School people to trim it? We gave the tree.”

“Because I promised, Nat,” replied Dorothy, firmly, “and because I just like to do it for little Emily. I got the very doll she ordered, and Aunt Winnie got me a lot of pretty things this morning.”

“Wish momsey would devote her charity to her poor little son,” said the young man, drily. “He is the one who needs it most!”

“Never mind, dear,” and Dorothy put her arms around him, “you shall have a dolly, too.”

“Here’s Ned,” he interrupted, “I wonder if he got my skates sharpened? I asked him, but I’ll wager he forgot.”

The other brother, a few years Nat’s senior, pulled off his furlined coat, and entered the library, where the cousins were chatting.

“Getting colder every minute,” he declared. “We had better take the cutter out to Sanders’s—that is, if Doro insists upon going.”

“Of course I do,” Dorothy cried. “I wouldn’t disappoint little Emily for anything. Funny how you boys have suddenly taken a dislike to going out there.”

“Now don’t get peevish,” teased Ned. “We will take you, Coz, if we freeze by the wayside.”

“Did you get my skates?” Nat asked.

“Not done,” the brother replied. “Old Tom is busy enough for ten grinders. Expect we will have a fine race.”

“And I can’t get in shape. Well, I wish I had taken them out to Wakefield’s. He would have had them done days ago. But if we are going to Sanders’s, better get started. I’ll call William to put the cutter up.”

“Here come Ted and Mabel now. They’re sleighing, too,” exclaimed Dorothy. “Won’t we have a jolly party!”

“That’s a neat little cutter,” remarked Ned, glancing out of the window. “And Mabel does look pretty in a red—what do you call that Scotch cap?”

“Tam o’Shanter,” Dorothy helped out. “Yes, it is very becoming. But Neddie, dear?” and her voice questioned.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied indifferently. “Mabel was always kind of—witchy. I like that type.”

“And Ted is—so considerate,” Dorothy added with a mock sigh. “I do wonder how Bob and Tavia are getting along?”

“Probably planning suicide by this time—I say planning, you know, not executing. It would be so nice for a boy as good as Bob to be coerced into some wild prank by the wily Tavia.”

“She did not happen, however, to lead you into any,” retorted Dorothy, “and I take it you are a ‘good boy’.”

“Oh, but how hard she tried,” and he feigned regret. “Tavia would have taught me to feed out of her hand, had I not been—so well brought up.”

This bantering occupied the moments between the time Ted’s sleigh glided into view, and its arrival at the door of the Cedars.

“’Lo, ’lo!” exclaimed Mabel, her cheeks matching the scarlet of her Tam o’Shanter.

“Low, low! Sweet and Low!” responded Nat. “Also so low!”

“No—but Milo!” said Ned, with a complimentary look at Mabel. “The Venus mended.”

“‘High low,’” went on Ted. “That’s what it is. A high—low and the game! To go out there to-night in this freeze!”

“Strange thing,” Dorothy murmured, “how young men freeze up—sort of antagonistic convulsion.”

“Oh, come on,” drawled Ned, “when a girl wills, she will—and there’s an end on it.”

It did not take the girls long to comply—Dorothy was out with Ted, Mabel, Nat and Ned before the boys had a chance to relent.

“Those bundles?” questioned Ted, as Dorothy surrounded herself with the things for Emily.

“Now did you ever!” exclaimed Dorothy. “It seems to me everything is displeasing to-day.”

“No offence, I’m sure,” Ted hastened to correct, “but the fact is—we boys had a sort of good time framed up for this afternoon. Not but what we are delighted to be of service——”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Dorothy asked.

It seemed for the moment that the girls and boys were not to get along in their usual pleasant manner. But the wonderful sleighing, and the delightful afternoon, soon obliterated the threatening difficulties, and a happy, laughing party in each cutter glided over the road, now evenly packed with mid-winter snow.

The small boys along the way occasionally stole a ride on the back runners of the sleighs, or “got a hitch” with sled or bob, thus saving the walk up hill or the jaunt to the ice pond.

“Oh, there’s Dr. Gray!” Dorothy exclaimed suddenly as a gentleman in fur coat and cap was seen hurrying along. “I wonder why he is walking?”

“For his health, likely,” Ted answered. “Doctors know the sort of medicine to take for their own constitutions.”

By this time they were abreast of the physician. Dorothy called out to him:

“Where’s your horse, Doctor?”

“Laid up,” replied the medical man, with a polite greeting. “He slipped yesterday——”

“Going far?” Ted interrupted, drawing his horse up.

“Out to Sanders’s,” replied the doctor.

“Sanders’s!” repeated Dorothy. “That’s where we’re going. Who’s sick?”

“The baby,” replied the doctor, “and they asked me to hurry.”

“Get in with us,” Ted invited, while Dorothy almost gasped. Little Emily sick! She could scarcely believe it.

Dr. Gray gladly accepted the invitation to ride, and the next cutter with Ned, Nat and Mabel, pulled up along side of Ted’s.

“You may as well turn back,” Dorothy told them. Then she explained that little Emily was sick, and likely would not want her Christmas tree trimmed.

“But I’ll go along,” she said, “I may be able to help, for her mother is sick, even if she is with her.”

After all her preparations, it was a great disappointment to think the child could not enjoy the gifts. Dr. Gray told her, however, that Emily was subject to croup, and that perhaps the spell would not last.

At the house they found everything in confusion. Emily’s sick mother coughed harder at every attempt she made to help the little one, while Mr. Sanders, the child’s grandfather, tried vainly to get water hot on a lukewarm stove.

“Pretty bad, Doc,” he said with a groan, “thought she’d choke to death last night.”

Without waiting to be directed, Dorothy threw aside her heavy coat, drew off her gloves, and was breaking bits of wood in her hands, to hurry the kettle that, being watched, had absolutely refused to boil.

“You can just put that oil on to heat, Miss Dale,” Dr. Gray said, he having bidden the sick woman to keep away from Emily. “We’ll rub her up well with warm oil, and see if we can loosen up that congestion.”

Emily lay on the uneven sofa, her cheeks burning, and her breath jerking in struggles and coughs.

Dorothy found a pan and had the oil hot before the doctor was ready to use it.

“Quite a nurse,” he said, in that pleasant way the country doctor is accustomed to use. “Glad I happened to meet you.”

“I’m glad, too,” Dorothy replied sincerely. “Never mind, Emily, you will have your Christmas tree, as soon as we get the naughty cold cured,” she told the child.

Emily’s eyes brightened a little. The tree still stood in a corner of the room. Outside, Ted was driving up and down the road in evident impatience, but Dorothy was too busy to notice him.

Soon the hot applications took effect, and Emily breathed more freely and regularly. Then the doctor attended to the other patient—the mother. It was a sad Christmas time, and had a depressing effect even on the young spirits of Dorothy. She tried to speak to Emily, but her eyes wandered around at the almost bare room, and noted its untidy appearance. Dishes were piled up on the table, pans stood upon the floor, papers were littered about. How could people live that way? she wondered.

Mrs. Tripp, Emily’s mother, must be a widow, Dorothy thought, and she knew old Mrs. Sanders had died the Winter before.

The doctor had finished with Mrs. Tripp. He glanced anxiously about him. To whom would he give instructions? Mr. Sanders seemed scarcely capable of giving the sick ones the proper care.

Dorothy saw the look of concern on the doctor’s face and she rightly interpreted it.

“If we only could take them to some other place,” she whispered to him. Then she stopped, as a sudden thought seized her.

“Doesn’t Mr. Wolters always make a Christmas gift to the sanitarium?” she asked Dr. Gray.

“Always,” replied the doctor.

“Then why can’t we ask him to have little Emily and her mother taken to the sanitarium? They surely need just such care,” she said quickly.

The doctor slapped one hand on the other, showing that the suggestion had solved the problem. Then he motioned Dorothy out into the room across the small hall. She shivered as she entered it, for it was without stove, or other means of heating.

“If I only had my horse,” he said, “I would go right over to Wolters’s. He would do a great deal for me, and I want that child cared for to-night.”

“I’ll ask Ted to let us take his sleigh,” Dorothy offered, promptly. “He could go with us to the Corners, and then you could drive.”

“And take you?” asked Dr. Gray. “I am sure you young folks have a lot to do this afternoon.”

“No matter about that,” persisted Dorothy. “If I can help, I am only too glad to do it. And Mr. Wolters is on Aunt Winnie’s executive board. He might listen to my appeal.”

There was neither time nor opportunity for further conversation, so Dorothy hastily got into her things, and soon she was in Ted’s sleigh again, huddled close to Dr. Gray in his big, fur coat.

The plan was unfolded to Ted, and he, anxious to get back to his friends, willingly agreed to walk from the Corners, and there turn the cutter over to the charity workers.

“But Dorothy,” he objected, “I know they will all claim I should have insisted on your coming back with me. They will say you will kill yourself with charity, and all that sort of thing.”

“Then say I will be home within an hour,” Dorothy directed, as Ted jumped on the bob that a number of boys were dragging up the hill. “Good-bye, and thank you for the rig.”

“One hour, mind,” Ted called back. “You can drive Bess, I know.”

“Of course,” Dorothy shouted. Then Bess was headed for The Briars, the country home of the millionaire Wolters.

“Suppose he has already made his gift,” Dorothy demurred, as she wrapped the fur robe closely about her feet, “and says he can’t guarantee any more.”

“Then I guess he will have to make another,” said the doctor. “I would not be responsible for the life of that child out there in that shack.”

“If he agrees, how will you get Mrs. Tripp and Emily out to the sanitarium?” Dorothy asked.

“Have to ’phone to Lakeside, and see if we can get the ambulance,” he replied. “That’s the only way to move them safely.”

It seemed to Dorothy that her plan was more complicated than she had imagined it would be, but it was Christmas time, and doing good for others was in the very atmosphere.

“It will be a new kind of Christmas tree,” observed the doctor. “But she’s a cunning little one—she deserves to be kept alive.”

“Indeed she does,” Dorothy said, “and I’m glad if I can help any.”

“Why I never would have thought of the plan,” said the doctor. “I had been thinking all the time we ought to do something, but Wolters’s Christmas gift never crossed my mind. Here we are. My, but this is a great place!” he finished. And the next moment Dorothy had jumped out of the cutter and was at the door of Mr. Ferdinand Wolters.

CHAPTER VI
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Dorothy was scolded. There her own family—father, Joe and Roger, to say nothing of dear Aunt Winnie, and the cousins Ned and Nat—were waiting for her important advice about a lot of Christmas things, and she had ridden off with Dr. Gray, attending to the gloomy task of having a sick child and her mother placed in a sanitarium.

But she succeeded, and when on the following day she visited Emily and her mother, she found the nurses busy in an outer hall, fixing up the Christmas tree that Mr. Sanders had insisted upon bringing all the way from the farmhouse where Dorothy had left it for little Emily.

The very gifts that Dorothy left unopened out there, when she found the child sick, the nurses were placing on the tree, waiting to surprise Emily when she would open her eyes on the real Christmas day.

And there had been added to these a big surprise indeed, for Mr. Wolters was so pleased with the result of his charity, that he added to the hospital donation a personal check for Mrs. Tripp and her daughter. The check was placed in a tiny feed bag, from which a miniature horse (Emily’s pet variety of toy) was to eat his breakfast on Christmas morning.

Major Dale did not often interfere with his daughter’s affairs, but this time his sister, Mrs. White, had importuned him, declaring that Dorothy would take up charity work altogether if they did not insist upon her taking her proper position in the social world. It must be admitted that the kind old major believed that more pleasure could be gotten out of Dorothy’s choice than that of his well-meaning, and fashionable, sister. But Winnie, he reflected, had been a mother to Dorothy for a number of years, and women, after all, knew best about such things.

It was only when Dorothy found the major alone in his little den off his sleeping rooms that the loving daughter stole up to the footstool, and, in her own childish way, told him all about it. He listened with pardonable pride, and then told Dorothy that too much charity is bad for the health of growing girls. The reprimand was so absurd that Dorothy hugged his neck until he reminded her that even the breath of a war veteran has its limitations.

So Emily was left to her surprises, and now, on the afternoon of the night before Christmas, we find Dorothy and Mabel, with Ned, Nat and Ted, busy with the decorations of the Cedars. Step ladders knocked each other down, as the enthusiastic boys tried to shift more than one to exactly the same spot in the long library. Kitchen chairs toppled over just as Dorothy or Mabel jumped to save their slippered feet, and the long strings of evergreens, with which all hands were struggling, made the room a thing of terror for Mrs. White and Major Dale.

The scheme was to run the greens in a perfect network across the beamed ceiling, not in the usual “chandelier-corner” fashion, but latticed after the style of the Spanish serenade legend.

At intervals little red paper bells dangled, and a prettier idea for decoration could scarcely be conceived. To say that Dorothy had invented it would not do justice to Mabel, but however that may be, all credit, except stepladder episodes, was accorded the girls.

“Let me hang the big bell,” begged Ted, “if there is one thing I have longed for all my life it was that—to hang a big ‘belle’.”

He aimed his stepladder for the middle of the room, but Nat held the bell.

“She’s my belle,” insisted Nat, “and she’s not going to be hanged—she’ll be hung first,” and he caressed the paper ornament.

“If you boys do not hurry we will never get done,” Dorothy reminded them. “It’s almost dark now.”

“Almost, but not quite,” teased Ted. “Dorothy, between this and dark, there are more things to happen than would fill a hundred stockings. By the way, where do we hang the hose?”

“We don’t,” she replied. “Stockings are picturesque in a kitchen, but absurd in such a bower as this.”

“Right, Coz,” agreed Ned, deliberately sitting down with a wreath of greens about his neck. “Cut out the laundry, ma would not pay my little red chop-suey menu last week, and I may have to wear a kerchief on Yule day.”

“Oh, don’t you think that—sweet!” exulted Mabel, making a true lover’s knot of the end of her long rope of green that Nat had succeeded in intertwining with Dorothy’s ‘cross town line’.

“Delicious,” declared Ned, jumping up and placing his arms about her neck.

“Stop,” she cried. “I meant the bow.”

“Who’s running this show, any way?” asked Ted. “Do you see the time, Frats?”

The mantle clock chimed six. Ned and Nat jumped up, and shook themselves loose from the stickery holly leaves as if they had been so many feathers.

“We must eat,” declared Ned, dramatically, “for to-morrow we die!”

“We cannot have tea until everything is finished,” Dorothy objected. “Do you think we girls can clean up this room?”

“Call the maids in,” Ned advised, foolishly, for the housemaids at the Cedars were not expected to clean up after the “festooners.”

Dorothy frowned her reply, and continued to gather up the ends of everything. Mabel did not desert either, but before the girls realized it, the boys had run off—to the dining room where a hasty meal, none the less enjoyable, was ready to be eaten.

“What do you suppose they are up to?” Mabel asked.

“There is something going on when they are in such a hurry. What do you say if we follow them? It is not dark, and they can’t be going far,” answered Dorothy.

Mabel gladly agreed, and, a half hour later, the two girls cautiously made their way along the white road, almost in the shadow of three jolly youths. Occasionally they could hear the remarks that the boys made.

“They are going to the wedding!” Dorothy exclaimed. “The seven o’clock wedding at Winter’s!”

Mabel did not reply. The boys had turned around, and she clutched Dorothy’s arm nervously. Instinctively both girls slowed their pace.

“They did not see us,” Dorothy whispered, presently. “But they are turning into Sodden’s!”

Sodden’s was the home of one of the boys’ chums—Gus Sodden by name. He was younger than the others, and had the reputation of being the most reckless chap in North Birchland.

“But,” mused Mabel, “the wedding is to be at the haunted house! I should be afraid——”

“Mabel!” Dorothy exclaimed, “you do not mean to say that you believe in ghosts!”

“Oh—no,” breathed Mabel, “but you know the idea is so creepy.”

“That is why,” Dorothy said with a light laugh, “we have to creep along now. Look at Ned. He must feel our presence near.”

The boys now were well along the path to the Sodden home. It was situated far down in a grove, to which led a path through the hemlock trees. These trees were heavy with the snow that they seemed to love, for other sorts of foliage had days before shed the fall that had so gently stolen upon them—like a caress from a white world of love.

“My, it is dark!” demurred Mabel, again.

“Mabel Blake!” accused Dorothy. “I do believe you are a coward!”

It was lonely along the way. Everyone being busy with Christmas at home, left the roads deserted.

“What do you suppose they are going in there for?” Mabel finally whispered.

“We will have to wait and find out,” replied Dorothy. “When one starts out spying on boys she must be prepared for all sorts of surprises.”

“Oh, there comes Gus! Look!” Mabel pointed to a figure making tracks through the snow along the path.

“And—there are the others. It did not take them long to make up. They are—Christmas—Imps. Such make-ups!” Dorothy finished, as she beheld the boys, in something that might have been taken, or mistaken, for stray circus baggage.

Even in their disguise it was easy to recognize the boys. Ned wore a kimono—bright red. On his head was the tall sort of cap that clowns and the old-fashioned school dunce wore. Nat was “cute” in somebody’s short skirt and a shorter jacket. He wore also a worsted cap that was really, in the dim light, almost becoming. Ted matched up Nat, the inference being that they were to be Christmas attendants on Santa Claus.

The girls stepped safely behind the hedge as the procession passed. The boys seemed too involved in their purpose to talk.

“Now,” said Dorothy, “we may follow. I knew they were up to something big.”

“Aren’t they too funny!” said Mabel, who had almost giggled disastrously as the boys passed. “I thought I would die!”

There was no time to spare now, for the boys were walking very quickly, and it was not so easy for the girls to keep up with them and at the same time to keep away from them.

Straight they went for what was locally called the “haunted” house. This was a fine old mansion, with big rooms and broad chimneys, which had once been the home of a family of wealth. But there had been a sad tragedy there, and after that it had been said that ghosts held sway at the place. It had been deserted for two years, but now, with the former owner dead, a niece of the family, fresh from college, had insisted upon being married there, and the house had been accordingly put into shape for the ceremony.

It was to be a fashionable wedding, at the hour of six, and people had kept the station agent busy all day inquiring how to reach the scene of the wedding.

Lights already burned brightly in the rooms, that could be seen to be decorated in holiday style. People fluttered around and through the long French windows; the young folks, boys and girls, being hidden in different quarters, could alike see something of what was going on in the haunted house.

“They’re coming!” Dorothy heard Nat exclaim, just as he ducked in by the big outside chimney. The broad flue was at the extreme end of the house, forming the southern part of the library, just off the wide hall that ran through the middle of the place. Dorothy and Mabel had taken refuge in one of the many odd corners of the big, old fashioned porch, which partly encircled this wing, and commanding a wonderful view of the interior of the house, the halls and library, and long, narrow drawing room.

There was a smothered laugh at the corner of the porch where the boys had ducked, and the girls watched in wonder. The latter saw Nat boost Ned up the side of the porch column, and Ted followed nimbly. In tense silence the girls listened to their footsteps cross the porch roof, then as scraping and slipping and much suppressed mirth floated down.

“They’re going down the chimney!” declared Dorothy, in astonishment.

“They surely are!” affirmed Mabel, leaning far over the porch rail.

“But, Doro, what of the fire?”

“They don’t use that chimney. They use the one on the other side of the house, and the one in the kitchen.”

CHAPTER VII
REAL GHOSTS

“That explains the basket!” exclaimed Dorothy, suddenly.

“How can they do it!” Mabel giggled excitedly.

“They can’t,” Dorothy replied, calmly, “they’ll simply get in a mess—soot and things, you know.”

“Let’s run. I’m too excited to breathe! I know something dreadful is bound to happen!” And Mabel clutched Dorothy’s arm.

“And leave the boys to their fate? No, indeed, we’ll see the prank through, since we walked into it,” Dorothy said, determinedly.

Mabel laughed nervously, and looked at Dorothy in puzzled impatience. “I always believe in running while there’s time,” she explained.

Music, sweet and low, floated out on the still, cold air of the night, and the wedding guests, in trailing gowns of silver and lace and soft satins, stood in laughing groups, all eyes turned toward the broad staircase.

“How quiet it’s become; everyone has stopped talking,” whispered Mabel, in Dorothy’s ear.

“How peculiarly they are all staring! But of course it must be exciting just before the bride appears,” murmured Dorothy, in answer.

“Oh, there comes the bride!” cried Mabel. “Isn’t she sweet!”

“It’s a stunt to trail downstairs that way—like a summer breeze. How beautifully gauzy she looks!” sighed Dorothy.

The eyes of the guests were turned half in wonder toward the old chimney place, and half smilingly toward the bride. On came the bride, tall and slender and leaning gracefully on her father’s arm, straight toward the tall mantel in the chimney place, which was lavishly banked with palms and flowers, and the minister began reading the ceremony.

“Hey! Let go there!” Ned’s muffled voice floated above the heads of the wedding guests, who stood aghast.

“You’re stuck all right, old chap,” came the consoling voice of Nat in a ghostly whisper.

Sounds of half-smothered, weird laughter—or so the laughter seemed to the guests—filled the air. The bridegroom flushed and looked quickly at his bride, who clung to her father’s arm, pale with fright. The minister alone was calm.

As the bridegroom’s clear answer: “I will” came to the ears of Dorothy and Mabel out on the porch, a creepy sound issued from the great fireplace. The newly-made husband kissed his bride, and the guests moved back.

Dorothy leaned eagerly forward to catch a glimpse of the radiantly smiling bride. Just then a tall palm wavered, fell to the floor with a crash, and in falling, carried vases and jars of flowers with it, and the ghostly laughter could be plainly heard by all.

All the tales that had been told of the haunted house came vividly before each guest. There were feminine screams, a confused rush for the hallway, and in two seconds the wedding festivities were in an uproar. The bride sank to the floor, and with white, upturned face, lay unconscious.

The men of the party with one thought jumped to the fireplace, and Ned was dragged, by way of the chimney, into the room. Completely dazed, utterly chagrined, and looking altogether foolish, he sat in a round, high basket, his knees crushed under his chin, the clown’s cap rakishly hanging over one ear, his face unrecognizable in its thick coating of cobwebs and soot.

“Oh, we’re so sorry,” Dorothy’s eager young voice broke upon the hushed crowd, as she ran into the room, with Mabel behind her.

Ned stared open-mouthed at the gaily-dressed people. It had happened so suddenly, and was so far from what he had planned, that he could not get himself in hand.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed the bride’s father, pacing up and down, “can’t someone get order out of this chaos?”

The bridegroom was chafing the small white hands of his bride, and the guests stepped away to give her air. The wedding finery lay limp and draggled. Dorothy stifled a moan as she looked. Quickly jumping out of the crowd she left the room. Mabel stood still, uncertain as to what to do. At the long French windows appeared Nat, Ted and Gus, grotesque in their make-ups and trying in vain to appear as serious as the situation demanded.

“Step in here!” commanded the father, and the boys meekly stepped in. A brother of the bride held Ned firmly by the arm. “Now, young scallywags, explain yourselves!”

It was an easy thing for the irate father to demand, but it completely upset the boys. They couldn’t explain themselves.

In an awed whisper, Ned ventured an explanation: “We only wanted to keep up the reputation of the house.”

“And the basket stuck,” eagerly helped out Ted. “We just thought we would whisper mysteriously and—and cough—or something,” and Ned tried to free himself from the grip on his arm.

“It was wider than we thought and the basket kept going down——” Nat’s voice was hoarse, but he couldn’t control his mirth.

“The rope slipped some—and the basket stuck——” Ted’s voice was brimming over with apologies.

“Naturally, we would have entered by the front door,” politely explained Gus, “had we foreseen this.”

“You see it stuck,” persisted Ted, apparently unable to remember anything but that awful fact.

“Then it really wasn’t spooks,” asked a tall, dark-haired girl, as she joined the group.

One by one the guests gingerly returned to the room and stood about, staring in amusement at the boys. The cool, though severe stares of the ladies were harder to bear than any rough treatment that might be accorded them by the men. Against the latter they could defend themselves, but, as Ned suddenly realized, there is no defence for mere man against the amused stare of a lady.

“It certainly could be slated at police headquarters as ‘entering’,” calmly said a stout man, taking in every detail of the boys’ costumes. “Disturbing the peace and several other things.”

“With intent to do malicious mischief,” the man who spoke balanced himself on his heels and swung a chrysanthemum to and fro by the stem.

The minister was walking uneasily about. The bride was on a sofa where she had been lifted to come out of her faint.

In a burst of impatience Ted whispered to Mabel, whom, for some reason, he did not appear at all surprised to see there: “Where’s Dorothy?”

Mabel, scared and perplexed, shook her head solemnly. But, as if in answer to the question, Dorothy rushed into the room, her cheeks aglow, her hair flying wildly about, and behind her walked Dr. Gray.

Dr. Gray’s kindly smile beamed on the little bride, and he soon brought her around. Sitting up, she burst into a peal of merry laughter.

“What, pray tell me, are they?” she demanded, pointing at the boys. She was still white, but her eyes danced, and her small white teeth gleamed between red lips.

“My cousins,” bravely answered Dorothy. Everyone laughed, and the boys, in evident relief, shouted.

“You’ve come to my wedding!” exclaimed the bride.

“Kind of ’em; wasn’t it?” said the bridegroom, sneeringly.

“But we’re going now,” quickly replied Dorothy, with great dignity.

“Why?” asked the bride with wide open eyes. “Since you are not really spooky creatures, stay for the dancing.”

“We’re terribly thankful you are not ghosts,” chirped a fluffy bridesmaid.

“You see if you had really been spooks,” laughed the bride, “everyone would have shrieked at me that horrible phrase, ‘I told you so,’ because you know I insisted upon being married in this house, just to defy superstition.”

“Just think what you’ve saved us!” said the tall, dark-haired girl.

“Of course if it will be any accommodation,” awkwardly put in Ned, “we’ll dance.” He thought he had said the perfectly polite thing.

“He’s going to dance for us!” cried the tall girl, to the others in the hall, and everyone crowded in.

An hour later, trudging home in the bright moonlight, Dorothy sighed: “Weren’t they wonderful!”

“It was decent of them to let us stay and have such fun,” commented Ned.

“And such eats!” mused Nat. And Nat and Ned, with a strangle hold on each other, waltzed down the road.

Happy, but completely tired, the boys and girls plowed through the snow, homeward bound.

CHAPTER VIII
THE AFTERMATH

Christmas day, at dusk, the boys were stretched lazily before the huge fire in the grate, when Dorothy jumped up excitedly:

“Boys, here’s Tavia! And I declare, Bob Niles is with her!”

“Good for Bob!” sang out Ned.

“’Rah! ’Rah!” whooped Ted, and all rushed for the door.

Gaily Tavia hugged them all. Bob stood discreetly aside.

“Father was called away, and it was so dreary—I just ran over to see everyone,” gushed Tavia.

“Well, we’re glad to see you,” welcomed Aunt Winnie.

“Oh, Tavia,” whispered Dorothy, “how did you manage to get Bob?”

“Get whom?” Tavia tried to look blank. Dorothy spoiled the blankness by stuffing a large chocolate cream right into Tavia’s mouth before her chum could close it.

“Thought you’d find Tavia interesting,” grinned Ned, helping Bob take off his great ulster, at which words the lad addressed flushed to his temples.

“Say, fellows, that yarn about the hose——” began Nat.

“Nat no longer believes in Santa and the stockings,” chimed in Ned, “he hung up all his socks last night and——”

Nat glared at Ned, then calmly proceeded: “About the hose, as I was saying, is nonsense! I own some pretty decent-looking socks, as you’ve noticed—I hung ’em all up and nary a sock remained on the line this morning. Santa stole them!”

“It’s the funniest thing about Nat’s socks,” explained Dorothy, hastily, “he thought one pair would not hold enough, and so strung them all over the fireplace, and this morning they were gone!”

Ted hummed a dreamy tune, and stared at the beamed ceiling, with a faraway look in his eyes. Nat, with sudden suspicion, grabbed Ted’s leg, and there, sure enough, was one pair of his highly-prized, and highly-colored, socks, snugly covering Ted’s ankles.

A rough and tumble fight followed, and Tavia, with high glee, jumped into it. Finally, breathless and panting, they stopped, and demurely Tavia, for all the world like a prim little girl in Sunday School, sank to a low stool, with Bob at her feet. Nothing could be quieter than Tavia, when Tavia decided on quietness.

“We came over in the biggest sleigh we could find,” said Bob, “so that all could take a drive—Mrs. White and Major Dale too, you know.”

“Oh, no, the young folks don’t want an old fellow like me,” protested Major Dale.

“We just do!” Dorothy replied, resting her head against her father’s arm affectionately. “We simply won’t go unless you and Aunt Winnie come.”

“Why, of course, dear, we’ll go,” answered Aunt Winnie, who was never known to stay at home when she could go on a trip. As she spoke she sniffed the air. “What is that smell, boys?”

“Something’s burning,” yawned Ted, indifferently, just as if things burning in one’s home was a commonplace diversion from the daily routine.

Noses tilted, the boys and girls sniffed the air.

Suddenly Bob and Nat sprang to Tavia’s side and quickly beat out, with their fists, a tiny flame that was slowly licking its way along the hem of her woollen dress. With her reckless disregard of consequences, Tavia had joined in the rough and tumble fight with the boys, and, exhausted, had rested too near the grate. A flying spark had ignited the dress, which smouldered, and only the quick work of the boys saved Tavia from possible burns. For once she was subdued. Mrs. White soothed her with motherly compassion. She was always in dread lest Tavia’s reckless spirit would cause the girl needless suffering.

“You see,” said Bob, smiling at Tavia, as they piled into the sleigh and he carefully tucked blankets about the girls, “you can’t entirely take care of yourself—some time you’ll rush into the fire, as you did just now.”

For an instant Tavia’s cheeks flamed. He was so masterful! She yearned to slap him, but considering the fire escapade, she couldn’t, quite.

The major was driving, with Dorothy snuggled closely to his side, and Ted curled up on the floor. Nat took care of Aunt Winnie on the next seat and Bob and Tavia were in the rear.

On they sped over snow and ice, the bitter wind sharply cutting their faces, until all glowed and sparkled at the touch of it.

“Did you hear from the girls?” asked Dorothy, turning to Tavia.

“Just got Christmas cards,” answered Tavia.

“I fared better than that. Cologne wrote a fourteen page letter——”

“All the news that’s worth printing, as it were,” laughed Tavia.

“Underlined, Cologne asked whether I had heard the news about Mingle, and provokingly ended the letter there. I’m still wondering. Her departure at such an opportune moment was a blessing, but we never stopped to think what might have caused it,” said Dorothy, thoughtfully.

“Well, whatever it was, it saved us,” contentedly responded Tavia. “By the way, Maddie sent me the cutest card—painted it herself!”

“Who wants to ride across the lake?” demanded Major Dale, slowing up the horses, “that will save us climbing the hill, you know, and the ice is plenty thick enough; don’t you think so, Winnie?”

“Yes, indeed,” Aunt Winnie answered, ready for anything that meant adventure, and as they all chorused their assent joyfully, away they drove over the snow-covered ice.

The horses galloped straight across the lake, up the bank, and then came a smash! The steeds ran into a drift, dumped over the sleigh; and a shivering, laughing mass of humanity lay on the new, white snow.

“Such luck!” cried Tavia, “out of the fire into the snow!”

While Major Dale and the boys righted the overturned sleigh, Bob took care of the ladies.

“You and the girls leave for New York to-morrow, Tavia tells me,” said Bob.

“Yes,” replied Aunt Winnie, with a sigh, “a little pleasure trip, and some business.”

“Business?” cried Dorothy, closely scrutinizing her aunt’s worried face.

Quick to scent something that sounded very much like “family matters,” Tavia turned with Bob, and deliberately started pelting with snow the hard-working youths at the sleigh.

“Aw! Quit!” scolded Ted.

“There, you’ve done it! That one landed in my ear! Now, quit it!” Nat stopped working long enough to wipe the wet snow from his face.

But Tavia’s young spirits were not to be squelched by mere words; Bob made the snow balls for Tavia to throw, which she continued to do with unceasing ardor.

“Why, yes, Dorothy,” Aunt Winnie replied, watching Tavia. “I’m afraid there will be quite a bit of business mixed with our New York trip. I’m having some trouble. It’s the agent who has charge of the apartment house I am interested in—you remember, the man whom I did not like.”

“The apartment you’ve taken for the Winter?” questioned Dorothy, shivering.

“You’re cold, dear.” Aunt Winnie, too, shivered. “Run over with Tavia and jump around, it’s too chilly to stand still like this. How unfortunate we are! The sun will soon dip behind those hilltops, and the air be almost too frosty for comfort.”

“Tell me,” persisted Dorothy, “what is it that’s worrying you, Aunt Winnie? I’ve noticed it since I came home. I want to be all the assistance I can, you know.”

“You couldn’t help me, Dorothy, in fact, I do not even know that I am right about the matter. I do not trust the agent, but he had the rent collecting before I took the place, so I allowed him to continue under me. I can only say, Dorothy, that something evidently is wrong. My income is not what it should be.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry! But, I’m glad you told me. Wait until we reach New York—we’ll solve it,” and Dorothy pressed her lips together firmly.

Aunt Winnie laughed. “Don’t talk foolishly, dear. It takes a man of wide experience and cunning to deal with any real estate person, I guess; and most of all a New York agent. My dear, let us forget the matter. There, the sleigh seems to be right side up once more.”

“Tavia,” whispered Dorothy, as she held her friend back, “we’re in for it! Aunt Winnie has a mystery on her hands! In New York City! Let us see if you and I and the boys can solve it!”

“Good! We’ll certainly do it, if you think it can be done,” said Tavia. “Oh, good old New York town! It makes me dizzy just to think of the whirling mass of rushing people and the autos and ’buses, and shops and tea-rooms! Doro, you must promise that you won’t drag me into more than ten tea-rooms in one afternoon!”

“I solemnly promise,” returned Dorothy, “if you’ll promise me to keep out of shops one whole half-hour in each day!”

CHAPTER IX
JUST DALES

It was three days after Christmas, and what was left of the white crystals was fast becoming brown mud, and the puddles and rivulets of melted snow, very tempting to the small boy, made walking almost impossible for the small boy’s elders. The air was soft, and as balmy as the first days of Spring. One almost expected to hear the twittering of a bluebird and the chirp of the robins, but nevertheless a grate fire burned brightly in Dorothy’s room, with the windows thrown open admitting the crisp air and sunlight.

“Shall I take my messaline dress, Tavia?” Dorothy asked, holding the garment in mid-air.

“If we go to the opera you’ll want it; I packed my only evening gown, that ancient affair in pink,” said Tavia, laughing a bit wistfully.

“You’re simply stunning in that dress, Tavia,” said Dorothy. “Isn’t she, Nat?” she appealed to her cousin.

“That flowery, pinkish one, with the sash?” asked the boy.

“Yes,” said Tavia, “the one that I’ve been wearing so long that if I put it out on the front steps some evening, it would walk off alone to any party or dance in Dalton.”

“You know,” said Nat, looking at Tavia with pride, “when you have that dress on you look like a—er—a well, like pictures I’ve seen of—red-haired girls,” the color mounted Nat’s brow and he looked confused. Dorothy smiled as she turned her back and folded the messaline dress, placing it carefully in her trunk. Nat was so clumsy at compliments! But Tavia did not seem to notice the clumsiness, a lovely light leaped to her clear brown eyes, and the wistfulness of a moment before vanished as she laughed.

“I was warned by everyone in school not to buy pink!” declared Tavia.

“So, of course,” said Dorothy laughing, “you straightway decided on a pink dress. But, seriously, Tavia, pink is your color, the old idea of auburn locks and greens and browns is completely smashed to nothingness, when you wear pink! Oh dear,” continued Dorothy, perplexed, “where shall I pack this wrap? Not another thing will go into my trunk.”

“Are you taking two evening wraps?” asked Tavia.

“Surely, one for you and the other for me. You see this is pink too,” Dorothy held up a soft, silk-lined cape, with a collar of fur. Quick tears sprang to Tavia’s eyes, and impulsively she threw her arms about Dorothy.

“Don’t strangle Dorothy,” objected Nat.

“You always make me so happy, Doro,” said Tavia, releasing her chum, who looked happier even than Tavia, her fair face flushed. The hugging Tavia had given had loosened Dorothy’s stray wisps of golden hair, that fell about her eyes and ears in a most bewitching way.

“Girls,” called Aunt Winnie, from below stairs, “aren’t you nearly finished?”

“All finished but Nat’s part,” answered Dorothy. Then to Nat she said: “Now, cousin, sit hard on this trunk, and perhaps we’ll be able to close it.”

Nat solemnly perched on the lid of the trunk, but it would not close.

“Something will have to come out,” he declared.

“There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in my trunk that I can leave behind,” said Dorothy.

“My trunk closed very easily,” said Tavia, “I’ll get it up from the station and we’ll pack the surplus gowns in it,” she turned triumphantly to Dorothy. “Too bad I sent it on so early. But we can get it.”

“The very thing!” Dorothy laughed. “Run, Nat, and fetch Tavia’s trunk from the station.”

“Dorothy,” called Aunt Winnie again, “we only have a few hours before train time. Your trunk should be ready for the expressman now, dear.”

“Hurry, Nat,” begged Dorothy, “you must get Tavia’s trunk here in two minutes. Coming,” she called down to Aunt Winnie, as she and Tavia rushed down the stairs.

“The trunk won’t close because the gowns won’t fit,” dramatically cried Tavia.

“So the boys have gone for Tavia’s, and we’ll pack things in it,” hurriedly explained Dorothy.

“What is all this about gowns?” asked Major Dale, drawing Dorothy to the arm of the great chair in which he was sitting.

“I’m packing, father, we’re going to leave you for a while,” said Dorothy, nestling close to his broad shoulders.

“But not for very long,” Aunt Winnie said. “You and the boys must arrange so that you can follow in at least one week.”

“Well, it all depends on my rheumatism,” answered the major. “You won’t want an old limpy soldier trying to keep pace with you in New York City. Mrs. Martin, the tried and true, will take fine care of us while you are gone.”

“No, that won’t do,” declared Dorothy, “we know how well cared for you will be under Mrs. Martin’s wing, but we want you with us. In fact,” she glanced hastily at Aunt Winnie, “we may even need you.”

“Perhaps the best way,” said Aunt Winnie, thoughtfully, “would be to send you a telegram when to come, and by that time, you will no doubt be all over this attack of rheumatism.”

“Ned and Nat are as anxious as are you girlies to get there,” replied Major Dale, “so I’ll make a good fight to arrive in New York City.”

“Who is going to tell me stories at bed-time, when Dorothy’s gone?” asked little Roger. “I don’t want Doro to go away, ’cause she’s the best sister that any feller ever had.”

Roger was leaning against the Major’s knee, and Dorothy drew him close to her.

“Sister will have to send you a story in a letter every day. How will that do?” she asked, as she pressed her cheek against his soft hair.

“Aw, no,” pouted Roger, “tell them all to me now, before you go away.”

“I’ll tell you one and then father will tell one; father will tell one about the soldier boys,” murmured Dorothy in Roger’s ear.

“Oh, goody,” Roger clapped his hands; “and Aunt Winnie and Tavia and Ned and Nat and everybody can tell me one story to-night and that will fill up for all the nights while you are away!”

“Dorothy!” screamed Tavia, bursting into the room in wild excitement, “the boys have gone without my trunk check! They can’t get it!”

“And the gowns will have to be left behind!”

“Never!” laughed Tavia, “I’ll run all the way to the station and catch them!”

“They’ve taken the Fire Bird, maybe you’ll meet them coming back.”

Tavia dashed, hatless, from the house. They watched her as she fairly flew along the road, in a short walking skirt, heavy sweater pulled high around her throat, and her red hair gleaming in the sun.

Major Dale had always greatly admired Tavia; he liked her fearless honesty and the sincerity of her affections. Aunt Winnie, too, loved her almost as much as she loved Dorothy.

“I’ve wondered so much,” said Dorothy, “what trouble Miss Mingle is in. She left school so suddenly that last day, and Cologne was so provoking in her letter.”

“An illness, probably,” said Aunt Winnie, kindly.

“It can’t be anything so commonplace as illness,” said Dorothy. “Cologne would have gone into details about illness. The telegram, and her departure, were almost tragic in their suddenness. I feel so selfish when I think of our treatment of that meek little woman. No one ever was interested in her, that I remember. Her great fault was a too-meek spirit. She literally erased herself and her name from the minds of everyone.”

Major Dale and Aunt Winnie listened without much enthusiasm. Aunt Winnie was worried about Dorothy, who showed so little inclination to enter the whirl of society in North Birchland. She had looked forward with much pleasure to presenting her niece to her social world.

But Dorothy had little love for the society life of North Birchland. She loved her cousins and her small brothers, and seemed perfectly happy and contented in her home life, and attending to the small charities connected with the town. She seemed to prefer a hospital to a house party, a romp with the boys to a fashionable dance, and she bubbled with glee in the company of Tavia, ignoring the girls of the first families in her neighborhood.

“Your trip to New York, daughter,” began Major Dale, slily smiling at Aunt Winnie, “will be your debut, so to speak, in the world.”

Dorothy answered nothing, but continued to smooth away the hair from Roger’s brow.

“What are you thinking of?” her father asked musingly, not having received an answer to his first remark.

“Oh, nothing in particular,” sighed Dorothy, “except that I don’t see why I should make a debut anywhere. I don’t want to meet the world,—that is, socially. I want to know people for themselves, not for what they’re worth financially or because of the entertaining they do. I just like to know people—and poorer people best of all. They are interesting and real.”

“As are persons of wealth and social position,” answered Aunt Winnie, gently.

“I’m going to be a soldier, like father,” said Joe, “and Dorothy can nurse me when I fall in battle.”

“Me, too,” chirped little Roger, “I want to be a soldier and limp like father!”

“Oh, boys!” cried Dorothy, in horror, “you’ll never, never be trained for war.”

“What’s that?” asked Major Dale. “Don’t you want the boys to receive honor and glory in the army?”

“No,” said Dorothy decidedly, “I’ll never permit it. Of course,” she hastened to add, “if Joe must wear a uniform, he might go to a military school, if that will please him.”

The major scoffed at the idea. Joe straightened his shoulders, and marched about the room, little Roger following in his wake, while the major whistled “Yankee Doodle.”

The sound of the Fire Bird was heard coming up the driveway, and in another second Nat, Ned and Ted rushed into the room.

“We can’t have the trunk without the check,” explained Nat, breathlessly, “where is it?”

“Tavia discovered the check after you left, and she followed you down to the station,” explained Aunt Winnie.

“We took a short cut back and missed her, of course,” said Nat, dejectedly.

“We won’t have any time to spare,” declared Aunt Winnie, walking to the window, “the train leaves at seven-thirty, and it is after six now,” Dorothy followed her to the window. They both stood still in astonishment.

“Boys!” cried Dorothy, “come quick!”

The boys scrambled to the window. There was Tavia, coming up the drive, serenely seated on top of her trunk, in the back part of a small buggy, enjoying immensely the wind that brushed her hair wildly about her face, while the driver, the stoutest man in North Birchland, occupied the entire front seat.

“I found it,” she cried lightly jumping to the ground, “and this was the only available rig!”

“Never mind,” said Dorothy, “nothing counts but a place to pack the gowns!”

“And catch the train for New York City,” cried Tavia, from the top landing of the first flight of stairs. “Everybody hurry! We have just time enough to catch the train!”

CHAPTER X
SIXTY MILES AN HOUR

The station at North Birchland was just a brown stone building, and a small platform, surrounded by a garden, like all country town stations. But a more animated crowd of young people had rarely gathered anywhere. Dorothy, Tavia and Aunt Winnie were noticeable among the crowd, their smart travelling suits and happy smiling faces being good to look upon. Ned, who was to accompany his mother, stood guard over the bags, while they were being checked by the station master. Nat, Ted and Bob, who had come to see them off, pranced about, impatient for the train, and altogether they were making such a racket that an elderly lady picked up her bag and shawls, and quickly searched for a quieter part of the station. It was such a long time since the elderly lady had been young and going on a journey, that she completely forgot all about the way it feels, and how necessary it is to laugh and chatter noisily on such occasions.

Nat looked in Tavia’s direction constantly, and at last succeeded in attracting her attention. He appeared so utterly miserable that instinctively Tavia slipped away from the others, and walked with him toward the end of the station. But this did not make Bob any happier. He devoted himself to Dorothy and Aunt Winnie, casting longing glances at Nat and Tavia. Dorothy was charming in a travelling coat of blue, and a small blue hat and veil gracefully tilted on her bright blond hair, a coquettish quill encircling her hat and peeping over her ear. Tavia was dressed in a brown tailored suit, and a lacy dotted brown veil accentuated the pink in her cheeks and the brightness of her eyes.

A light far down the track told of the approaching train. Joe and Roger were having an argument as to who saw the gleam first and Major Dale had to come to the rescue and be umpire. As the rumble and roar grew nearer, and the light became bigger, the excitement of the little group became intense. With a great, loud roar and hissing, the train stopped and the coach on which they had engaged berths was just in front of them.

“The Yellow Flyer,” read Joe, carefully, “is that where you will sleep?” he asked, looking in wonder at the car.

“Yes, indeed, Joey,” said Dorothy, kissing him good-bye, “in cunning little beds, hanging from the sides of the coach.”

Dorothy held out her hand to Bob. “Good-bye,” she said. Tavia, just behind Dorothy, glancing quickly up at Bob, blushed as she placed her slim hand in his large brown one.

“You’re coming to New York, too, with the boys?” she asked, demurely.

Bob held her hand in his strong grip and it hurt her, as he said very stiffly: “I don’t know that I shall.” With a toss of her head, Tavia started up the steps of the coach, but Bob following, still held her hand tightly, and she stopped. All the others were on the train. She looked straight into his eyes and said: “We’re going to have no end of fun, you know.” Bob released her hand. Standing in the vestibule, Tavia turned once more: “Please come,” she called to him, then rushed into the train and joined the others.

When the cars pulled out, the last thing Tavia saw was Bob’s uncovered head and Nat’s waving handkerchief, and she smiled at both very sweetly. Then they waved their handkerchiefs until darkness swallowed up the little station.

The girls looked about them. A sleeping car! Tavia thrilled with pleasant anticipation. It was all so very luxurious! Aunt Winnie almost immediately discovered an old acquaintance sitting directly opposite. The lady, very foreign in manner and attire, held a tiny white basket under her huge sable muff. She gushed prettily at the unexpected pleasure of having Aunt Winnie for a travelling companion. Tavia thought she must be the most beautiful lady in all the world, and both she and Dorothy found it most disconcerting to be ushered into a sleeping car filled with staring people, and be introduced to so lovely a creature as Aunt Winnie’s friend. The beautiful lady whispered mysteriously to Aunt Winnie, and pointed to the hidden basket and instantly a saucy growl came from it.

“A dog,” gasped Dorothy, “why, they don’t permit dogs on a Pullman!”

“Let’s get a peep at him,” said Tavia, “the little darling, to go travelling just like real people!”

Immediately following the growl, the lady and Aunt Winnie sat in dignified silence, and stared blankly at the entire car.

“They’re making believe,” whispered Tavia, “pretending there isn’t any dog, and that no one heard a growl!”

“I’m simply dying to see the little fellow!” said Dorothy, unaware that the future held an opportunity to see the dog that now reposed in the basket.

“Well, Dorothy,” said Tavia, “according to the looks across the aisle ‘there ain’t no dog,’” Tavia loved an expressive phrase, regardless of grammatical rules.

“Did Ned get on?” suddenly asked Dorothy. “I don’t see him.”

“He’s on,” answered Tavia, disdainfully, “in the smoker. Didn’t you hear him beg our permission?”

After an hour had passed Aunt Winnie came toward them and said:

“Don’t you think it best to retire now, girls? You have a strenuous week before you.”

Dorothy and Tavia readily agreed, as neither had found much to keep them awake. Many of the passengers had already retired, some of them immediately after the last stop was made. Tavia could not remain quiet, and happy too, where there was no excitement. She preferred to sleep peacefully—and strangely, the Pullman sleeper offered no fun even to an inventive mind like Tavia’s.

“Ned might have stayed with us,” sighed Dorothy. “Boys are so selfish.”

“Wouldn’t you like to go into the smoker too?” suggested Tavia.

“What! Tavia Travers, you’re simply too awful!” cried Dorothy.

“Oh, just to keep awake. After all, I find I have a yearning to stay up. All in favor of the smoker say ‘Aye.’” And a lone “Aye” came from Tavia.

“Besides,” said Dorothy, “the porter wouldn’t permit it.”

“Unless we carried something in our hands that looked like a pipe,” mused Tavia.

“We might take Ned some matches,” rejoined Dorothy, seeing that the subject offered a little variety.

“When the porter takes down our berths, we’ll quietly suggest it, and see how it takes,” said Tavia. “Along with feeling like storming the smoker, I’m simply dying for a weeny bit of ice-cream.”

“Tavia,” said Dorothy, trying to speak severely, “I think you must be having a nightmare, such unreasonable desires!”

“So,” yawned Tavia, “I’ll have to go to bed hungry, I suppose.”

“Do you really want ice-cream as badly as that?”

“I never yearned so much for anything.”

Dorothy was rather yearning for ice-cream herself, since it had been suggested, but she knew it was an utter impossibility. The dining car was closed, and how to secure it, Dorothy could not think. However, she called the porter, and, while he was taking down their berths, she and Tavia went over to say good-night to Aunt Winnie and her friend.

“I’ll try not to awaken you, girls, when I retire,” said Aunt Winnie. “Ned’s berth, by a strange coincidence, is the upper one in Mrs. Sanderson’s section. Years ago, Mrs. Sanderson and myself occupied the same section in a Pullman for an entire week, and it was the beginning of a delightful friendship.”

Mrs. Sanderson told the girls about her present trip, but Tavia was so hungry for the ice-cream, and Dorothy so busy trying to devise some means to procure it, that they missed a very interesting story from the beautiful lady.

Then, returning to their berths, Tavia climbed the ladder, and everything was quiet.

“Dorothy,” she whispered, her head dangling over the side of the berth, “peep out and find the porter. I must have ice-cream.”

“Why, Tavia?” asked Dorothy.

“Just because,” answered Tavia in the most positive way.

Dorothy and Tavia both looked out from behind their curtains. Every other one was drawn tightly, save two, for Aunt Winnie and her friend and Ned, who had come back, were the only passengers still out of their berths. Ned winked at the girls when their heads appeared.

Holding up a warning finger at Ned, who faced them, the girls stole out of their section and crept silently toward the porter. In hurried whispers they consulted him, but the porter stood firm and unyielding. They could not be served with anything after the dining car closed.

So they then descended to coaxing. Just one girl pleading for ice-cream might have been resisted, but when two sleep-eyed young creatures, begged so pitifully to be served with it at once, the porter threw up his hands and said:

“Ah’ll see if it can be got, but Ah ain’t got no right fo’ to git it tho!”

Soon he reappeared with two plates of ice-cream. Tavia took one plate in both hands hungrily, and Dorothy took the other. When they looked at Aunt Winnie’s back, Ned stared, but Aunt Winnie was too deeply interested in her old friend to care what Ned was staring at.

“Duck!” cautioned Tavia, who was ahead of Dorothy, as she saw Aunt Winnie suddenly turn her head. They slipped into the folds of a nearby curtain, but sprang instantly back into the centre of the aisle. Snoring, deep and musical, sounded directly into their ears from behind the curtain, and even Tavia’s love of adventure quailed at the awful nearness of the sound. One little lurch and they would have landed in the arms of the snoring one!

Just to make the ice-cream taste better, Aunt Winnie again turned partly. Dorothy and Tavia stood still, unable to decide whether it was wise to retreat or advance, Ned solved it for them by rising and waiting for the girls. Aunt Winnie, of course, turned all the way around and discovered the two girls hugging each other, in silent mirth.

“Tavia would have cream,” explained Dorothy.

“But it would have tasted so much better had we eaten it without being found out,” said Tavia, woefully.

“Just look at this,” said Ned, “and maybe the flavor of the cream will be good enough,” and he handed the girls a check marked in neat, small print, which the porter had handed him: “Two plates of ice-cream, at 75 cents each, $1.50.”

“How outrageous!” cried Dorothy.

“We’ll return it immediately,” said Tavia, indignantly.

“I paid it,” explained Ned, drily. “You wanted something outside of meal hours, and you might have expected to have the price raised.”

“At that cost each spoonful will taste abominable,” moaned Tavia.

Said Dorothy sagely: “It won’t taste at all if we don’t eat it instantly. It’s all but melted now.”

“Yes, pray eat it,” said the gruff voice of a man behind closed curtains, “so the rest of us can get to sleep.”

Another voice, with a faint suggestion of stifling laughter, said: “I’m in no hurry to sleep, understand; still I engaged the berth for that purpose——”

But Dorothy and Tavia had fled, and heard no more comments. Aunt Winnie followed.

“How ridiculous to want ice-cream at such an hour, and in such a place!” she said.

“Old melted stuff,” complained Tavia, “it tastes like the nearest thing to nothing I’ve ever attempted to eat!”

“And, Auntie,” giggled Dorothy, “we paid seventy-five cents per plate! I’m drinking mine; it’s nothing but milk!”

Soon the soft breathing of Aunt Winnie denoted the fact that she had slipped silently into the land of dreams. Dorothy, too, was asleep, and Tavia alone remained wide-awake, listening to the noise of the cars as the train sped over the country. Tavia sighed. She had so much to be thankful for, she was so much happier than she deserved to be, she thought. One fact stood out clearly in her mind. Sometime, somehow, she would show Dorothy how deeply she loved and admired her, above everyone else in the world. After all, a sincere, unselfish love is the best one can give in return for unselfish kindness.

The next thing Tavia knew, although it seemed as if she had only just finished thinking how much she loved Dorothy, a tiny streak of sunlight shone across her face. She sat bolt upright, confused and mystified, in her narrow bed so near the roof. The sleepy mist left her eyes, and with a bound she landed on the edge of her berth, her feet dangling down over the side of it. The train was not moving, and peeping out of the ventilator, she saw that they were in a station, and an endless row of other trains met her gaze.

“Good morning!” she sang out to Dorothy, but the only answer was the echo of her own voice. Some few seconds passed, and Tavia was musing on what hour of the morning it might be, when a perfectly modulated voice said: “Anything yo’-all wants, Miss?”

“Gracious, no! Oh, yes I do. What time is it?” she asked.

“Near on to seven o’clock,” said the porter.

“Thank you,” demurely answered Tavia, and started to dress. All went well until she climbed down the ladder for her shoes and picked up a beautifully-polished, but enormous number eleven! She looked again, Aunt Winnie’s very French heeled kid shoes and Dorothy’s stout walking boots and one of her own shoes were there, but her right shoe was gone!

She held up the number eleven boot and contemplated it severely. To be sure both her feet would have fitted snugly into the one big shoe, but that wasn’t the way Tavia had intended making her debut in New York City. She looked down the aisle and saw shoes peeping from under every curtain, and some stood boldly in the aisle. The porter at the end of the car dozed again, and Tavia, the number eleven in hand, started on a still hunt for her own shoe.

She passed several pairs of shoes, but none were hers. At the end of the car, she jumped joyfully on a pair, only to lay them down in disappointment. They were exactly like hers, but her feet had developed somewhat since her baby days, whereas the owner of these shoes still retained her baby feet, little tiny number one shoes! On she went, bending low over each pair. At last! Tavia dropped the shoe she was carrying beside its mate! At least that was some relief, she would not now have to face the owner in her shoeless condition and return to his outstretched hand his number eleven.

Tavia thought anyone with such a foot would naturally feel embarrassed to be found out. Now for her own. She stooped cautiously, deeply interested in her mission, under the curtain and a heavy hand was laid on her shoulder. She looked up in dazed astonishment into the dark face of the porter. Mercy! did he think she was trying to enter the berth? She realized, instantly, how suspicious her actions must have appeared.

“Please find my shoe!” she commanded, haughtily, “it is not in my berth.”

The porter released her. “Yo’ done leave ’em fo’ me to be polished?” he inquired, respectfully.

“No, indeed,” replied Tavia, trying to maintain her haughty air, “it has simply disappeared, and I must have two shoes, you know.”

“O’ course,” solemnly answered the porter.

“Tavia,” called Dorothy’s voice, “what is the trouble?”

“Nothing at all,” calmly answered Tavia, “I’ve lost a shoe; a mere nothing, dear.”

One by one the curtains moved, indicating persons of bulk on the other side, trying to dress within the narrow limits, and the murmur of voices rose higher. Shoes were drawn within the curtains and soon there were none left, and Tavia stood in dismay. Aunt Winnie, Dorothy and Ned and lovely Mrs. Sanderson joined Tavia, others stood attentively and sympathetically looking on while they searched all over the car, dodging under seats, pulling out suit-cases and poking into the most impossible places, in an endeavor to locate Tavia’s lost shoe.

A sharp, sudden bark and Mrs. Sanderson returned in confusion to her section and smothered the protests of her dog. She called Ned to help her put him into his little white basket, at which doggie loudly rebelled. He had had his freedom for an entire night, running up and down the aisle, playing with the good-natured porter.

Doggie played hide-and-seek under the berths and dragged various peculiar-looking black things back and forth in his playful scampering and he did not intend to return to any silk-lined basket after such a wild night of fun! So he barked again, saucy, snappy barks, then he growled fiercely at everyone who came near him. In fact, one of the peculiar-looking black things at that very moment was lying in wait for him, expecting him back to play with it, and just as soon as he could dodge his mistress, doggie expected to rejoin it, reposing in a dark corner of the car. At last he saw his opportunity, and with a mad dash, the terrier ran down the aisle, determination marking every feature, as pretty Mrs. Sanderson started after him, and Ned followed. Tavia sat disconsolately in her seat, wondering what anyone, even the most resourceful, could do with but one shoe!

A sudden howl of mirth from Ned, and an amused, light laugh from Mrs. Sanderson, and, back they came, Ned gingerly holding the little terrier and Mrs. Sanderson triumphantly holding forth Tavia’s shoe. By this time every passenger had left the car, and the cleaning corps stood waiting for Aunt Winnie’s party to vacate the vehicle.

Tavia put on the shoe, but first she shook the terrier and scolded him. He barked and danced up and down, as though he were the hero of the hour.

“We must get out of here, double-quick,” said Ned.

“Oh, dear me!” exclaimed Dorothy, “where is everything! I never can grab my belongings together in time to get off a train.”

“I’m not half dressed,” chirped Tavia, cheerfully, “and they will simply have to stand there with the mops and brooms, until I’m ready.”

Aunt Winnie sat patiently waiting. “Do you want to go uptown in the subway or the ’bus,” she asked.

“Both!” promptly answered the young people.

CHAPTER XI
A HOLD-ON IN NEW YORK

“My! Isn’t it hard to hang on!” breathed Tavia, clinging to Dorothy, as the subway train swung rapidly around the curves. As usual the morning express was crowded to overflowing, and the “overflowers” were squeezed tightly together on the platforms. Ned held Aunt Winnie by the arm and looked daggers at the complacent New Yorkers who sat behind the morning papers, unable to see any persons who might want their seats.

“Such unbearable air! It always makes me faint,” said Aunt Winnie, weakly.

“Let’s get out as quickly as possible,” said Dorothy, “the top of a ’bus for mine!”

“So this is a subway train,” exclaimed Tavia, as she was lurched with much force against an athletic youth, who simply braced himself on his feet, and saved Tavia from falling.

“The agony will be over in a second,” exclaimed Ned, as the guard yelled in a most bewildering way, “next stop umphgetoughly!” and another in the middle of the train, screamed in a perfectly unintelligent manner, “next stop fothburgedinskt!”

“What did he say?” said Tavia, wonderingly.

“He must have said Forty-second Street,” said Aunt Winnie, “that I know is the next stop.”

“I would have to ride on indefinitely,” said Tavia, “I could never understand such eloquence.”

“There,” said Dorothy, readjusting herself, “I expected to be hurled into someone’s lap sooner or later, but I didn’t expect it so soon.”

“You surely landed in his lap,” laughed Tavia, “see how he’s blushing. Why don’t you hang onto Ned, as we are doing.”

“Poor Ned,” said Dorothy, but she, too, grasped a portion of his arm, and like grim death the three women clung to Ned for protection against the merciless swaying of the subway train.

Reaching Forty-second Street, up the steps they dashed with the rest of the madly rushing crowd of people and out into the open street. Tavia tried to keep her mouth closed, because all the cartoons she had ever seen of a country person’s first glimpse of New York pictured them open-mouthed, and staring. She clung to Dorothy and Dorothy hung on Aunt Winnie, who had Ned’s arm in a firm grip.

Such crowds of human beings! Neither Dorothy nor Tavia had ever before seen so many people at one glance! So many people were not in Dalton in an entire year.

“This isn’t anything,” said Ned, out of his superior knowledge of a previous trip to New York. “This is only a handful—the business crowd.”

“Oh, let’s stay in front of the Grand Central Terminal,” said Dorothy, “I want to finish counting the taxicabs, I was only up to thirty.”

“I only had time to count five stories in that big hotel building,” cried Tavia, “and I want to count ’em right up into the clouds.”

“They’re not tall buildings,” said Ned, just bursting with information. “Wait until you see the downtown skyscrapers!”

“Ned throws cold water on all our little enthusiasms,” pouted Dorothy.

“Never mind,” said Aunt Winnie, “you and Tavia can come down town to-morrow and spend the day counting people and things.”

Arriving at the corner of Fifth Avenue, and successfully dodging many vehicles, they got safely on the opposite corner just in time to catch a speeding auto ’bus. Up to the roof they climbed.

“Isn’t it too delightful!” sighed Tavia, blissfully.

“We’ll come down town on a ’bus every day,” declared Dorothy.

They passed all the millionaires’ palatial residences in blissful ignorance of whom the palaces sheltered. They didn’t care which rich man occupied one mansion or another, they were happy enough riding on top of a ’bus.

Tavia simply gushed when they reached the Drive and a cutting sharp breeze blew across the Hudson river.

“I never imagined New York City had anything so lovely as this; I thought it was all tall buildings and smoky atmosphere and—lights!” declared Tavia.

Along the river all was quiet and luxurious and wonderful. The auto ’bus stopped before a small apartment house—that is, it was small comparatively. The front was entirely latticed glass and white marble. A bell boy rushed forward to relieve them of their bags, another took their wraps and a third respectfully held open the reception hall door. Down this hall, lined on two sides with growing plants, Aunt Winnie’s party marched in haughty silence. They were afraid to utter an unseemly word. Tavia’s little chin went up into the air—the bell boys were very appalling—but they shouldn’t know of the visitors’ suburban origin if Tavia could help it. They were assisted on the elevator by a dignified liveried man, and up into the air they shot, landing, breathless, in a perfectly equipped tiny hall. At home, of course, one would call it a tiny hall, but in a New York apartment house it was spacious and roomy.

Still another person, this time a woman, in spotless white, opened the door and into the door Aunt Winnie disappeared, and the others followed, although they were not at all sure it was the proper thing to do.

Then Tavia gasped. In her loveliest dreams of a home, she had never dreamed of anything as perfectly beautiful as this. Little bowers of pink and white, melted into other little rooms of gold and green and blue, and then a velvety stretch of something, which Tavia afterward discovered was a hall, led them into a kitchenette.

“Do people eat here?” said the dazed Tavia.

“One must eat, be the furnishings ever so luxurious,” sang Ned.

Dorothy rushed immediately to the tiny cupboard, and examined the Mother Goose pattern breakfast dishes, while Tavia gazed critically at the numerous mysterious doors leading hither and thither through the apartment.

They gathered together, finally, in the living room, which faced the river. The heavy draperies subdued the strong sunlight.

Mrs. White sighed the happy sigh that betokens rest, as she sank into a Turkish chair. Dorothy and Tavia were not ready to sit down yet—there was too much to explore. From their high place, there above the crowds, and seemingly in the clouds, they could see something akin to human beings moving about everywhere, even, it seemed, out along the river drive. For a brief time no one spoke; then Ned “proverbially” broke the silence.

“Well, Mom,” he emitted, “what is it all about? Did you just come into upholstered storage to have new looking glasses? Or is there a system in this insanity?”

Mrs. White smiled indulgently. Ned was beginning to take an interest in things. He must surmise that her trip to New York was not one of mere pleasure.

The girls, unconsciously discreet, had left the room.

“My dear son,” said the lady, now in a soft robe, just rescued from her suit-case, “I am glad to see that you are trying to help me. You know the Court Apartments, the one I hold purposely for you and Nat?” He nodded. “Well, the agent has been acting queerly. In fact, I have reason to question his honesty. He is constantly refusing to make reports. Says that rents have come down, when everyone else says they have gone up. He also declares some of the tenants are in arrears. Now, if we are to have so much trouble with the investment, we shall have to get rid of it.”

The remark was in the note of query. Nat brushed his fingers through his heavy hair.

“Well, Mom,” he said impressively, “we must look it over carefully, but I have always heard that New York real estate men—of a certain type—observe the certain and remember the type—are not always to be trusted. I wouldn’t ask better sport than going in for detective work on the half-shell. But say, this is some apartment! I suppose I may have it some evening for a little round-up of my New York friends? You know so many of the fellows seem to blow this way.”

“Of course you may, Ned. I shall be glad to help you.”

“Oh, you couldn’t possibly do that, mother,” he objected. “There is only one way to let boys have a good time and that is to let them have it. If one interferes it’s ‘good-night’,” and he paused to let the pardonable slang take effect.

“Just as you like, of course,” said the mother, without the least hint of offence. “I know I can depend upon you not to—eat the rugs or chairs. They are only hired, you know.”

“Never cared for that sort of food. In fact I don’t even like the feel of some of these,” and he rubbed his hand over the side of a plush chair. “Nothing like the home stuffs, Mom.”

“You are not disappointed?”

“Oh, no, not that. Only trying to remember what home is like. It kind of upsets one’s memory to take a trip and get here. I wonder what the girls are up to? You stay here while I inspect.”

Mrs. White was not sorry of the respite. She looked out over the broad drive. It was some years since her husband had taken her to a pretty little apartment in this city. The thought was absorbing. But it was splendid that she had two such fine boys. Yes, she must not complain, for both boys were in many ways like their father, upright to the point of peril, daring to the point of personal risk.

The maid, she who had come in advance from North Birchland, stepped in with the soft tread of the professional nurse to close the doors. Something must be going on in the kitchenette. Well, let the children play, thought Mrs. White.

Suddenly she heard something like a shriek! Even then she did not move. If there were danger to any one in the apartment she would soon know it—the old reliable adage—no news is good news, when someone shrieks.

CHAPTER XII
HUMAN FREIGHT ON THE DUMMY

Tavia almost fell over Ned. Dorothy grasped the door. The maid ruffled up her nice white apron!

They all scrambled into the living room and there was more, for with them, in fact, in Ned’s strong arms, was a child, a boy with blazing cheeks and defiant eyes.

“Look, mother! He came up on the dumb waiter!” said Ned, as soon as he could speak.

“Yes, and I nearly killed him,” blurted Tavia. “I thought the place was haunted!”

“On the dumb waiter?” repeated Dorothy.

The maid nodded her head decidedly.

“Why!” ejaculated Mrs. White, sitting up very straight.

“I didn’t mean anything,” said the boy, reflecting good breeding in choice of language, if not in manner of transportation. “I was just coming up to fly kites.”

“But on the dummy!” queried Ned.

“Well, we wouldn’t dare come up any other way. This apartment was not rented before and we had to sneak in on the janitor. This is the best lobby for kites,” and his eyes danced at the thought.

“But where’s the kite?” questioned Ned.

“Talent’s got it.”

“Talent?” repeated Dorothy.

“Yes, he’s the other fellow—the smartest fellow around. His real name—” he paused to laugh.

“Is what?” begged Tavia, coming over to the little fellow, with no hidden show of admiration.

“It’s too silly, but he didn’t choose it,” apologized the boy. “It’s C-l-a-u-d!”

“That’s a pretty name,” interposed Mrs. White, feeling obliged to say something agreeable.

“But he can’t bear it,” declared the boy. “My name is worse. Mother brought it from Rome.”

“Catacombs?” suggested Tavia, foolishly.

“No,” the lad lowered his voice in disgust. “But it’s Raphael.”

“That was the name of a great painter,” said Mrs. White, again feeling how difficult it was to talk to a small and enterprising New York boy.

“Maybe,” admitted the little one, “but I have Raffle from the boys, and that’s all right. Means going off all the time.”

Everyone laughed. Raffle looked uneasily at the door.

“But where’s that kite?” questioned Ned.

“Talent was waiting until I got up. Then I was to pull him up. He has the kites.”

“As long as I didn’t kill you, Raffle,” said Tavia, “I guess we won’t have to have you arrested for false entering.”

“Dorothy caught the rope just in time,” Ned explained, in answer to his mother’s look of inquiry. “Tavia was so scared she was going to let it drop.”

“We had ordered things,” Tavia explained further, “and thought they were coming up. I was just crazy to have something to do with all the machines in the place, so went to get the things. Imagine me seeing something squirm in the dark!”

“But you weren’t afraid,” said Raffle to Dorothy. “You just hauled me out.”

“Your coat got torn,” Dorothy remarked to divert attention. “What will your mother say?”

“She will never see it,” declared the little fellow. “She goes to rehearsal all day and sings all night. Tillie—she’s the girl—she likes me. She won’t mind mending it,” and he bunched together in his small hand the hole in the short coat.

“I’ll tell you,” interposed Ned, “they say dark haired people fetch good luck, and you are our first caller. Suppose we get Talent, and bring him up properly, kites and all. Then perhaps, when I get something to eat, you may show me how to fly a kite over the Hudson.”

“Bully!” exclaimed Raffle. “I’ll get him right away. If John—the janitor—catches him waiting with the kites—”

But he was gone with the rest of the sentence.

Ned slapped his knees in glee. Tavia stretched out full length, shoes and all, on the rose-colored divan, Dorothy shook with merry laughter, but Martha, the maid with the ruffled-up apron, turned to the kitchenette to hide her emotion.

“New York is certainly a busy place,” said Ned, finally. “We may get a wireless from home on the clothes line. Tavia, I warn you not to hang handkerchiefs on the roof. It’s tabooed, for—country girls.”

Tavia groaned in disagreement. The fact was she had made her way to the roof before she had explored her own and Dorothy’s rooms, and even Ned did not relish the idea of her sight-seeing from that dangerous height. But New York was actually fascinating Tavia. She would likely be looking for “bulls and bears” on Wall Street next, thought Ned.

“Aunty, we are going to have the nicest lunch,” interrupted Dorothy. “We all helped Martha; it was hard to find things, and get the right dishes, you know. I guess the last folks who had this apartment must have had a Chinese cook, for everything is put away backwards.”

“Yes, the pans were on the top shelves and the cups on the bottom,” Tavia agreed. “I took to the pans—I love to climb on those queer ladders that roll along!”

“Like silvery moonlight,” Ned helped out, “only the clouds won’t develop.”

“Wouldn’t I give a lot to have had all the boys share this fun,” said Dorothy. Then, realizing the looks that followed the word “boys,” she blushed peach-blow.

A Japanese gong sounded gently in the place called hall.

“There’s the lunch bell,” declared Dorothy. “And isn’t that little Aeolian harp on the sitting room door too sweet!”

“The sitting room is a private room in an apartment,” explained Ned, mischievously, “and it’s a great idea to have an alarm clock on the door.”

“There comes the boy with the kite,” Tavia exclaimed. “I don’t believe I care for lunch.”

“Oh, yes you do, my dear,” objected Mrs. White. “There are two boys and we will have to trust them on the balcony with their kites. The rail is quite high, and they look rather well able to take care of themselves.”

Tavia looked longingly at the boys, who now were making their way to what Dorothy had termed the Dove Cote. Ned insisted upon postponing his lunch until they got their strings both untied and tied again—first from the stick then to the rail. Martha said things would be cold, but Ned was obdurate.

At last Mrs. White and her guests were seated at the polished table in the green and white room. She glanced about approvingly, while Martha brought in the dishes.

“I made the pudding,” Dorothy confessed. “I remember our old housekeeper used to make that Brown Betty out of stale cake, and as Martha could get no other kind of cake handy I thought it would do.”

“A cross between pudding, cake and pie,” remarked Tavia, “but mostly sweet gravy. It smells good, however. And I—cleaned the lettuce. If you get any little black bugs—lizards or snails—”

“Oh, Tavia, don’t!” protested Dorothy, who at that moment was in the act of putting a lettuce leaf between her lips.

“But I was only going to say that these reptiles had been properly bathed and are perfectly wholesome. In fact they have been sterilized,” Tavia said, calmly.

“At any rate,” put in Mrs. White, “you all have succeeded in getting a very nice luncheon together. I had no idea you and Dorothy could be so useful. We might have gotten along with one more maid to help Martha. Then we would have had more house room.”

“I should think you could get the janitor to do odd jobs,” suggested Tavia, over a mouthful of broiled steak.

“Janitor!” exclaimed Mrs. White. “My dear, you do not know New York janitors! They are a set of aristocrats all by themselves. We will have to look out that we please the janitor, or we may go without service a day or two just for punishment.”

“Then I will have to be awfully nice to ours,” went on Tavia, in the way she had of always inviting trouble of one kind if not exactly the kind under discussion. “I saw him. He has the loveliest red cheeks. Looks like a Baldwin apple left over from last year.”

A rush through the apartment revealed Ned and the two kite boys.

“Anything left?” asked Ned. “These two youngsters have to wait until two o’clock for a bite to eat, and I thought—”

“Of course,” interrupted his mother, pleasantly, as she touched the bell for Martha. “We will set plates for them at once. Glad to have our neighbors so friendly.”

The little fellows did not look one bit abashed—another sign of New York, Dorothy noted mentally. Talent, or Tal, as they called him, managed to get on the same chair with Raffle, as they waited for the extra places to be made at the table.

Tavia gazed at them with eyes that showed no wonder. She expected so many things of New York that each surprise seemed to have its own niche in her delighted sentiments.

“You see,” said Raffle, “Tillie goes out for a walk about noon time, then mother gets in sometimes at two, and sometimes later. A feller always has to wait for someone.”

“Does Tillie take—a baby out?” ventured Dorothy.

“Baby!” repeated the boy. “I’m the baby. She never takes me out,” at which assertion the two boys laughed merrily.

“She just takes a complexion walk,” Ned helped out.

Martha did not smile very sweetly when told to make two more places at the table, but she did not frown either. In a short time Ned, Raffle and Talent, with Tavia for company, and Dorothy assisting Martha, were left by Mrs. White to their own pleasure, while she excused herself and went off to write some notes. She remembered even then what Ned had said about boys liking to have things to themselves, and was not sorry of the excuse.

But Tavia held to her chair. She knew the strangers would say something interesting, and her “bump” of curiosity was not yet reduced.

“My big brother goes to the university,” Raffle said. “But he eats at the Grill. He never has to wait.”

“Your brother?” repeated Tavia, as if that was the very remark she had been waiting for.

“Now Tavia,” cautioned Ned.

“Now Ned,” said Tavia, in a tone of defiance.

“I only wanted to say,” continued Ned, “that this big brother is probably studying law, and he may know a lot about—well, the number of persons in whom one person may be legitimately interested.”

The small boys were too much absorbed in their meal to pay attention to such a technical discussion. Tavia only turned her eyes up, then rolled them down quickly, in a sort of scorn, for answer to Ned.

“Now for your pudding,” announced Dorothy, who came from the kitchenette with three large dishes of the Brown Betty on a small tray.

“Um-m-m!” breathed the boys, drawing deep breaths so as to fully inhale the delicious aroma.

“What’s that?” asked Ned, as the outside door bell rang vigorously.

In reply Martha announced that the janitor wanted to know if anyone had tied a kite to the lobby rail.

“The janitor!” exclaimed both small boys in one breath. Then, without further warning, they simultaneously ducked under the table.

CHAPTER XIII
THE SHOPPING TOUR

“I guess I’ll wear my skating cap, the wind blows so on top of those ’buses,” remarked Tavia, as she and Dorothy prepared to go downtown to see the shops. It was their second day in New York.

“And I’ll wear my fur cap,” Dorothy announced, “as that sticks on so well. It is windy to-day.”

“Wasn’t it too funny about the little boys? I do believe if that janitor had caught them he would have punished them somehow. The idea of their kite dropping around the neck of the old gentleman on the next floor! I should have given anything to see the fun,” and Tavia laughed at the thought.

“The poor old gentleman,” Dorothy reflected. “To think he was not safe taking the air on his own balcony. I was afraid that Ned would be blamed. Then our apartment would be marked as something dangerous. But Aunt Winnie fixed it all right. Janitors love small change.”

“Most people do,” Tavia agreed. “I hope we find things cheap in New York. I do want so many odds and ends.”

“It will be quite an experience for us to go all alone,” Dorothy said. “We will have to be careful not to—break any laws.”

“Or any bric-a-brac,” added Tavia. “Some of those men we saw coming up looked to me like statues. I wonder anyone could enjoy life and be so stiff and statuesque.”

“We will see some strange things, I am sure,” Dorothy said. “I’m ready. Wait. I guess I’ll take my handbag. We may want to carry some little things home.”

“And I’ll take your silk bag if you don’t mind,” Tavia spoke. “I did not bring any along.”

So, after accepting all sorts of warnings from Ned and Mrs. White, each declaring that young girls had to be very well behaved, and very careful in such a large city, the two companions started off for their first day’s shopping.

Climbing up the little winding steps to the top of the Fifth Avenue ’bus Tavia dropped her muff. Of course a young fellow, with a fuzzy-wuzzy sort of a hat, caught it—on the hat. Tavia was plainly embarrassed, and Dorothy blushed. But it must be said that the young man with the velvet hat only looked at Tavia once and that was when he handed her muff up to her.

On top of the ’bus, away from the crowd (for they were alone up there), Dorothy and Tavia gave in to the laughter that was stifling them. They knew something would happen and it had, promptly.

“Perhaps that is why they wear such broad-brimmed hats,” Dorothy remarked, “to catch things.”

Soon an elderly woman puffed up the steps. She was so done up in furs she could not get her breath outside of them. Tavia and Dorothy took a double seat nearer the front, to allow the lady room near the steps.

“Oh, my! Thank you,” gasped the lady who had a little dog in her muff. “It does do one up so to climb steps!”

The country girls conversed in glances. They had read about dogs on strings, but had never heard of dogs in muffs.

“Lucky that muff did not drop,” Dorothy said, in a whisper. “I fancy the little dog would not like it.”

“I wish it had,” Tavia confessed. “The idea of a woman, who fairly has to crawl, carrying a dog with her.”

Once settled, the woman and the dog no longer interested our young friends. There were the boys on the street corners with their trays of violets; there were the wonderful mansions with so many sets of curtains that one might wonder how daylight ever penetrated; there were the taxicabs floating along like a new species of big bird; then the private auto conveyances—with orchids in hanging glasses! No wonder that Dorothy and Tavia scarcely spoke a word as they rode along.

There is only one New York. And perhaps the most interesting part of it is that which shows how real people live there.

“I wonder who’s cooking there now,” misquoted Tavia, as she got a peek into an open door that seemed to lead to nowhere in particular.

“Can you imagine people living in such closed-in quarters?” Dorothy remarked, “I should think they would become—canned.”

“They don’t live there,—they only sleep there,” Tavia disclosed, with a show of pride. “I do not believe a single person along here ever eats a meal in his or her house. They all go out to hotels.”

“But they can’t take the babies,” said Dorothy. “I often wonder what becomes of the babies after dark, when the parks are not so attractive.”

“Do you really suppose that people do live in those vaults?” musingly asked Tavia. “I should think they would smother.”

“We can’t see the back yards,” Dorothy suggested.

“Perhaps New York is like ancient Rome—all walls and back yards.”

“But the fountains,” exclaimed Tavia, “where are they?”

“There are sunken gardens behind those walls, I imagine,” explained Dorothy, “and they must be there.”

For some moments neither spoke further. The ’bus rattled along and as they neared Thirty-fourth Street stops were made more frequently.

THE ’BUS RATTLED ALONG AS THEY NEARED THIRTY-FOURTH STREET.

“We will get off at the next corner,” Dorothy told Tavia, “I know of one big store up here.”

They climbed down the narrow, winding stairs and with a bound were in the midst of the Fifth Avenue shopping crowd.

Dorothy shivered under her furs. “Where,” she asked, “do all the flowers come from? No one in the country ever sees flowers in the winter, and here they are blooming like spring time.”

“Do you feel peculiar?” demanded Tavia, stopping suddenly.

“Why, no,” answered Dorothy innocently; “do you?”

“I feel just as if I needed a—nosegay,” said Tavia, laughing slily. “We’re not at all as dashing as we might be!”

They purchased from a thinly-clad little boy two bunches of violets, sweetly scented, daintily tasseled—but made of silk!

“The silkiness accounts for the always fresh and blooming violets,” Dorothy said ruefully. “Now, we look just like real New Yorkers.”

“Now where is that store?” said Dorothy, looking about with a puzzled air. “I’m sure it was right over there.”

“Isn’t that a store,” said Tavia, “where all those autos and carriages are?”

“Where?” asked Dorothy, still bewildered.

“Where the brown-liveried man is helping ladies out of carriages and things,” Tavia answered.

“Oh,” said Dorothy meekly, “I thought that was a hotel!”

If there was anything in the world more subduedly rich, or more quietly lavish, than the shop that Dorothy and Tavia entered, the girls from the country could not imagine it. The richest and most costly of all things for which the feminine heart yearns, were displayed here. For the first few moments the girls did not talk. They were silent with the wonder of the costliness on every side. Then Tavia said timidly: “Nothing has a price mark on!”

“Hush!” whispered Dorothy, “they don’t have vulgar prices here. They only sell to persons who never ask prices.”

“Oh!” said Tavia, with quick understanding, “however, dare me to ask that wonderful creature with the coiffure, the price of those finger bowls,” murmured Tavia, a yearning entering her soul to possess a priceless article.

“What do you want with finger bowls?” asked Dorothy, mystified.

“How do I know? I may yet need a finger bowl,” enigmatically responded Tavia, “maybe to plant a little fern in.” She handled the finger bowl tenderly. Dorothy, too, picked up a tiny brass horse, hammered in exquisite lines. “Isn’t this lovely!” she exclaimed.

“It’s a wonderful piece of work,” admired Tavia, while she clung with intense yearning to the finger bowl.

“How much are these, please?” Dorothy asked the saleswoman.

The saleswoman carefully brushed back two stray locks that had escaped from their net, and gazing into space said: “Five dollars and Six dollars and ninety-seven cents.” Her attitude was slightly scornful at being asked the very common “how much.”

The scorn was too much for Tavia’s spirit. She lifted her chin: “I’ll take two of each kind, if you please, send them C.O.D.,” and, giving her Riverside Drive address, Tavia, followed by Dorothy, turned and gracefully swayed from the counter, in grand imitation of an elegantly gowned young girl who had just purchased some brass, and had it charged.

“Tavia, how awful!” gasped Dorothy. “Whatever will you do with those things!”

“Send them back,” answered Tavia, with great recklessness, her chin still held high.

Dorothy admitted that of course it wasn’t at all possible to back away from such a saleswoman, but she felt quite guilty about something. “We shouldn’t have yielded to our feelings,” she said gently, “it would, at best, have been only momentary humiliation.”

“We’re in the wrong store,” said Tavia, decidedly, “I must see price signs that can be read a block away. This place is too exquisite!”

“Isn’t this the dearest!” Dorothy darted to the handkerchief counter, and picked up a dainty bit of lace.

Tavia gazed at the small lacy thing with rapt attention, cautiously trying to see some hidden mark to indicate the cost, but there was none.

“Something finer than this, please,” queried Tavia, of the saleswoman, “it’s exquisite, Dorothy, but not just what I like, you see.”

Dorothy kept a frightened pair of eyes downcast, as the saleswoman handed Tavia another lace handkerchief saying, with a genial smile: “Eighteen dollars.” Tavia held up the handkerchief critically: “And this one?” she asked, pointing to another.

“Twelve dollars,” replied the saleswoman, all attention.

“We must hurry on,” interposed Dorothy, grasping Tavia’s arm in sheer desperation, “there are so many other things, suppose we leave the handkerchiefs until last?”

Critically Tavia fingered the costly bits of lace, as if unable to decide. Then she smiled artlessly at the saleswoman. “It’s hard to say, of course, we’re so rushed for time, but we’ll look at them again.” Together the girls hurried for the street door.

“That was really New York style; wasn’t it?” triumphantly declared Tavia. “Never again will I submit to superior airs when I want to know the price.”

“Hadn’t we better ask someone where stores are that sell goods with price marks on them?” laughingly asked Dorothy.

They followed the crowd toward Broadway and Sixth Avenue. Gaily Tavia tripped along. She never had been happier in all her life. She loved the whirl and the people, and the never-ending air of gaiety. Dorothy liked it all, but it made her a bit weary; the festal air of the crowd did seem so meaningless.

When they reached Sixth Avenue it took but an instant for both girls to pick out the most enticing shop and thither they hurried. It was brilliantly lighted, the gorgeous splendor was Oriental in its beauty, there was no quiet hidden loveliness about this store, it dazzled and charmed and it had price signs! Just nice little white signs, with dull red figures, not at all “screeching” at customers, but most useful to persons of limited means. One could tell with the merest glance just what counter to keep away from.

A struggling mass of humanity, mostly women, were packed in tightly about one counter. The girls could not get closer than five feet, but patiently they stood waiting their turn to see what wonderful thing was on sale. It was Tavia’s first bargain rush, and for every elbow that was jammed into her ribs, she stepped on someone’s foot. Dorothy held her head high above the crowd to breathe. At last they reached the counter, and the bargains that all were frantically aiming to reach were saucepans at ten cents each.

“After that struggle, we must get one, just for a memento of the bargain rush,” exclaimed Dorothy, crowding her muff under her arm. Something fell to the floor with a crash at the movement of Dorothy’s arm. Immediately there was great confusion, because, a little woman, flushed and greatly excited had cried out, “My purse! I beg your pardon madam, that is my purse you have!”

The small, excited woman was clinging desperately to the arm of another woman, who towered above the crowd.

“Why, that’s Miss Mingle!” cried Tavia to Dorothy.

“Oh, Miss Mingle!” called out Dorothy.

“Girls,” cried the little Glenwood teacher, excitedly, “this woman snatched my purse!”

They were all too excited at the moment to find anything strange in thus meeting with one another.

The big woman calmly surveyed the girls: “She, the blond one, knocked your purse down with her muff, I was goin’ to pick it up, that’s all. It’s under your feet now.”

The woman slowly backed into the crowd.

Dorothy’s eyes opened wide with wonder! The thing that had fallen had certainly made a crash! and the leather end sticking from the cuff of the woman’s fur coat sleeve surely looked like a purse! Dorothy gasped at the horror of it! What could she do? The woman was moving slowly farther and farther away.

Miss Mingle stooped to the floor in search of the purse. As quick as a flash the woman slipped out of the crowd, as Miss Mingle loosened her hold. Amazed and horrified at the boldness of the theft, Dorothy for one instant stood undecided, then she sprang after the woman and faced her unflinchingly:

“Give me that purse! It’s in the cuff of your coat sleeve!”

The woman drew herself up indignantly, glared at Dorothy, and would have made an effort to get away, scornfully ignoring the girl who barred her path, when a store detective arrived on the spot.

She, too, was a girl, modestly garbed in black. In a perfectly quiet voice she spoke to the woman.

“These matters can always be settled at our office, madam. Come with me.”

“The idea!” screamed the woman. “I never was insulted like this before! How dare you!”

“There is nothing to scream about,” said the young detective, in her soft voice, “I’ve merely asked you to come to the office and talk it over. Isn’t that fair?”

“Indeed, I’ll submit to nothing of the sort! A hard-working, honest woman like I am!” She made another effort to elude her accusers by a quick movement, but Dorothy kept close to one side and the store detective followed at the other. The woman stared stubbornly at the detective. Disgusted with the performance, Dorothy quietly reached for the protruding purse and held it up.

“Is this yours?” she asked, of Miss Mingle.

“Yes, yes, my dear!” cried Miss Mingle, gratefully accepting the purse, “I’m so thankful! I caught her hand as she slipped the purse away from my arm. How can I thank you, Miss Dale?”

Tavia led the way out of the crowd, and the store detective took charge of the woman, who was an old offender and well known.

“Dorothy Dale and Tavia Travers!” joyfully exclaimed Miss Mingle, when the excitement was over. “Where did you come from, and at such an opportune moment?”

“We are as surprised as you,” exclaimed Dorothy, “and so glad to have been able to be of assistance!”

“We’ll hang the saucepan in the main hall at Glenwood in honor of the bargain rush,” said Tavia, waving the parcel above her head.

“Girls, I’m still picking feathers out of my hair!” said Miss Mingle, laughing gaily.

“Don’t you love New York?” burst from Tavia’s lips. “I’m dreading the very thought of returning to Glenwood and school again!”

But Miss Mingle sighed. “I’m counting the days until my return to Glenwood, my dears. But, you don’t want to hear anything about that, you’re young and happy, and without care. Come and see us—I’m with my sister, and I would just love to have you.” At mention of her sister, Miss Mingle’s lips involuntarily quivered and she partly turned away. “Do come, girls, this is my address. I’m glad you’re enjoying New York; I wish I could say as much.”

As she said good-bye, Dorothy noticed how much more than ever the thin, haggard face was drawn and lined with anxiety, and the timid dread in her eyes enhanced by the bright red spots that burned in the hollows of her cheeks.

“We must call,” said Dorothy, when Miss Mingle had disappeared. “There is some secret burden wearing that little woman to a shred.”

“Her eyes have the look of a haunted creature,” said Tavia, seriously. “We can’t call to-morrow; we have the matinee, you know.”

“Yes, that’s always the way, one must do the pleasant things, and let misery and sorrow take care of themselves,” sighed Dorothy. “Well, we can the following day.”

CHAPTER XIV
THE DRESS PARADE

“Oh dear,” sighed Dorothy, falling limply into a handsomely upholstered rocker in the comfortable resting-room of the shop, half an hour after they had left Miss Mingle, “I’m completely exhausted!” She carried several parcels, which she dropped listlessly on a nearby couch, on which Tavia was resting.

“How mildly you express it!” cried Tavia, “I’m just simply dead! Don’t the crowds and the lights and confusion tire one, though! I’ll own up, that for just one wee moment to-day, I thought of Dalton, and its peaceful quiet and the blue sky and—those things, you know,” she hastily ended, always afraid of being sentimental.

“I shouldn’t want to think that all my days were destined to be spent in New York. It makes a lovely holiday place, but I like the country,” said Dorothy, as she watched a young girl, shabbily dressed, eating some fruit from a bag.

Tavia watched her too. “At least, the monotony of the country can always be overcome by simple pleasures, but here there is no escape to the peaceful—the temptations are too many. For instance,” Tavia jumped from her restful position, and sat before a writing table, and the shabby young girl who was eating an orange, stopped eating to stare at the schoolgirl. “Who wouldn’t just write to one’s worst enemy, if there was no one else, just to use these darling little desks!”

“And the paper is monogramed,” exclaimed Dorothy, regaining an interest in things. “What stunning paper!” She, too, drew up a chair to the dainty mahogany table and grasping a pen said: “We simply must write to someone. This is too alluring to pass by.”

“Here goes one to Ned Ebony,” and Tavia dipped the pen into the ink and wrote rapidly in a large scrawling hand.

“Mine will be to—Aunt Winnie,” said Dorothy, laughing.

The shabby girl finished her orange, and picking up a small bundle, took one lingering look at the happy young girls at the writing desks and left the resting room.

“Aren’t we the frivolous things,” said Tavia, “writing the most perfect nonsense to our friends merely because we found a dainty writing table!”

“With the most generous supply of writing paper!” said Dorothy. “But the couches and chairs in this room are too tempting to keep me at the writing desk.” Dorothy sealed her letter and again curled up in the spacious rocking chair.

“And while we are resting, we can study art,” exclaimed Tavia, gazing at the oil paintings and tapestry that adorned the walls.

A woman, with a grand assortment of large bundles and small children, tried to get them all into her arms at once, preparatory to leaving the resting room, but found it so difficult that she sat down once more and laughed good-naturedly, while the children scrambled about the place, loath to leave such comfortable quarters. Dorothy watched with interest, and wondered how any woman could ever venture out with so many small children clinging to her for protection, to do a day’s shopping. Tavia was more interested in art at that moment.

“Why go to the art museums?” she asked, “we can do that part on our trip right here and now; we only lack catalogues.”

“And we can do nicely without them,” said Dorothy, dragging her wandering attention back to Tavia. “I can enjoy all these pictures without knowing who painted them. We can have just five minutes more in this palatial room, and then we simply must go on.”

And five minutes after the hour, Dorothy persuaded Tavia to leave the ideal spot, and, entering the elevator, they were whirled upward to the dress parade.

Roped off from the velvet, carpeted sales floors, numerous statuesque girls paraded about, dressed in garments to charm the eye of all beholders—to lure the very short and stout person into purchasing a garment that looked divine on a willowy six-foot model; or, a wee bit of a lady into thinking that she can no longer exist, unless robed in a cloak of sable. But neither Dorothy nor Tavia cared much for the lure of the gorgeous garments, they were too awed at the moment to yearn for anything. A frail, ethereal creature, with a face of such delicacy and wistfulness, so dainty and graceful, with a little dimpled smile about her lips, passed the country girls and after that the girls could see nothing else in the room. They sat down and just watched her. A trailing robe of black velvet seemed almost too heavy for her slender white shoulders, and a large hat with snow white plume curling over the rim of the hat and encircling her bare throat, like a serpent, framed her flushed face.

“There,” breathed Tavia, “is the prettiest face I’ve ever dreamed of seeing.”

“She’s more than pretty, she has a soul,” said Dorothy, reverently. “There is something so wistful about her smile and the tired droop of her shoulders. I feel that I could love her!”

“She has put on an ermine wrap over the velvet gown,” said Tavia. Shrinking behind Dorothy she said impulsively: “Dare we speak to her? It must be the most wonderful thing in the world to have a face like that! And to spend all her days just wearing beautiful gowns!”

“She wears them so differently from the others here,” declared Dorothy. “She’s strikingly cool, so far beyond her immediate surroundings.”

“I think she must be a princess,” said Tavia, in a solemn voice, “no one else could look like that and stroll about with such an air!”

“I think she is someone who has been wealthy and is now very poor,” said Dorothy, tenderly. “How she must detest being stared at all day long! This work, no doubt, is all she is fitted for, having been reared to do nothing but wear clothes charmingly.”

“She’s changing her hat now,” said Tavia, watching the model as she was arrayed in a different hat. “We might just walk past and smile. I shall always feel unsatisfied if we cannot hear her voice.”

Together they timidly stepped near the wistful-eyed girl with the flushed face.

“You must grow so very tired,” said Dorothy, sympathetically.

A cool stare was the only reply.

“Hurry with the boa, you poky thing,” came from the red, pouting lips of the wistful-eyed girl, ignoring Dorothy and Tavia as though they were part of the building’s masonry. “I ain’t got all day to wait! Gotta show ten more hats before closing. Hurry up there, you girls, you make me mad! Now you hurry, or I’ll report you!” and turning gracefully, she tilted her chin to just the right angle, the shrinking, wistful smile appeared on her lips, the tired droop slipped to her shoulders, all the air of charm covered her like a mantle, and again she started down the strip of carpet, leaving behind her two sadly disillusioned young girls.

“Let us go right straight home,” said Dorothy. “One never knows what to believe is real in this hub-bub place.”

“We might have forgiven her anything,” said Tavia, “if she had been wistfully angry, or charmingly bossy; but to think that ethereal creature could turn into just a plain, everyday mortal!”

“The flowers were mostly artificial, the bargain counters mere stopping places for pickpockets, and the most beautiful girl was rude!” cried Dorothy.