Dorothy Dale's Promise

“THE BAD PENNIES”

The train started a second after the two almost breathless girls entered the half-empty chair car. They came in with a rush, and barely found their seats and got settled in them before the easily rolling train had pulled clear of the station and the yards.

“Back to dear old Glenwood School, Doro!” cried Tavia Travers, fairly hugging her more sober companion. “How do you feel about it?”

“_De_-lighted, Miss,” laughed Dorothy Dale. “After our trying experiences in New York----Well! a country life is strenuous enough for me, I guess.”

“But we did have some fun, Doro. And how we got the best of that hateful Akerson man! I just hate that fellow. I could beat him!”

“Your feeling is not scriptural,” groaned Dorothy, though her eyes twinkled. “Don’t you know, if you are struck on one cheek you should turn the other also?”

“But suppose you’re hit on the nose?” demanded Tavia. “One hasn’t two noses!”

“Well, Aunt Winnie is well rid of that Akerson,” said Dorothy, with a little sigh of satisfaction.

“And your cousins, Ned and Nat, have you to thank for the salvation of their income,” returned Tavia.

“_Us_, you mean,” laughed Dorothy. “You had more to do with the showing up of that real estate agent than I had, Tavia.”

“Nonsense---- Oh, here’s the station where the girls may join us. Do let me open that window, Doro! I don’t care if it is cold outside. I want to see if they are on the platform.”

Tavia was already struggling with the window. But windows in cars are made to stick, it would seem. Tavia cast a pleading glance from her big eyes at the trim young brakeman just then coming through the car.

“Please!” Tavia’s eyes said just as plainly as though she had spoken the word; but the young brakeman shook his head gravely.

“Do you really want it open, Miss?” he asked, hesitating at the chairs occupied by the two friends.

“I want to see out--just a little bit,” said Tavia, pouting.

“But if anybody objects----” the young brakeman continued, taking hold of the fixtures of the sash with his gloved hands.

“Isn’t he just a dear?” murmured Tavia to Dorothy, but loud enough for the young railroad man to hear.

“Do hush, Tavia!” gasped her friend.

The young man opened the window. The exertion seemed to have been considerable, for he grew red to the very tips of his ears while he was raising the sash!

“Oh, thank you--so much!” gushed Tavia, perfectly cool. And when the brakeman had gone, she turned to Dorothy, and demanded:

“Didn’t I say that prettily? Just like a New York society girl would say it--the one who took us to tea that time in the tea room that used to be a millionaire’s stable; do you remember?”

“You are just dreadful, Tavia!” groaned Dorothy Dale. “Will you never learn to behave?”

“There they are!” shrieked Tavia, with her head out of the window. “There are all the ‘bad pennies’--they always turn up again, you know.”

The train was slowing down and the long platform of the junction came into view.

“Who’s there?” begged Dorothy, willing to learn the details from her more venturesome companion.

“Ned Ebony--yes, ma’am! And there’s Cologne. Oh, bully! everybody’s here. This way, girls!” cried Tavia as the car passed a group of merry-faced girls of about their own age. “I hope you’ve all got chairs in this car.”

And, by good fortune, they had! Within the next few moments nearly a dozen of the pupils of Glenwood School had joined the chums--and all of these newcomers, as well as Dorothy and Tavia, belonged to the class that would graduate from the famous old school the coming June.

“Tell us all about New York--do!” cried Ned Ebony, otherwise Edna Black.

“And Miss Mingle!” urged Rose-Mary, whom the other girls called “Cologne” most of the time. “Is she coming back to Glenwood School to teach music?”

“Poor little Mingle has had a hard time,” Dorothy said. “But she is coming back to us--and we must treat her nicely, girls.”

“Oh, we must!” added Tavia. “Better than I treated her feather-bed.”

The girls all laughed at that, for it had been Tavia’s last prank at Glenwood to shower little Miss Mingle with the feathers from her own special tick.

“But about New York,” urged one of the other girls who had never been to the metropolis. “We’re just dying to know something about it, Doro.”

“And if it is as wicked as they say it is,” cried another.

“And as nice,” urged Ned Ebony.

“And as horribly dirty as they say,” went on Cologne.

“And the subways--and elevated trains--and all the rest of it,” came the seemingly unending demands.

“Help! help! ‘Ath-thith-tanth, pleath!’” cried Tavia. “That’s the way one of the girls in a big store called the floorwalker--jutht like that!”

“Now, go ahead and tell us something wonderful,” begged Cologne.

“See here,” said Dorothy, laughing, and diving into her handbag. “Here’s something that I cut out of the paper. It is how New York struck the wondering eye of an Arab who visited it recently. He sent this letter to his brother at home: