Dorothy Dale in the West

“And the world would be, too, if it wasn’t for the possible ‘hes’ that are to come into our lives,” quoth Tavia, with shocking frankness.

“You talk like a cave girl,” declared her chum. “Is there nothing on your mind but boys?”

“Yes’m! More boys!” chuckled Tavia. “It is June. The bridal-wreath is in bloom. If ‘In spring the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,’ can’t our girls’ fancies turn in June to thoughts of white lace veils, shoes that pinch your feet horribly--and can’t we dream of hobbling up to the altar to the sound of Mendelssohn’s march?”

“Hobble to the haltar, you mean,” sniffed Dorothy, with her best suffragette air.

“How smart!” crowed her chum. “But you mustn’t blame me for giggling this morning--you mustn’t!”

“Why not? What particular excuse have you?”

“That shad we had for breakfast. Shad is as full of bones as Cologne’s shoes are of feet. I always manage to swallow some of them--the bones, I mean, not dear Florida Water--Rosemary’s tootsies--and those said bones are tickling me right now.”

“How absurd,” said Dorothy Dale, as Tavia went off in another “spasm.” “Do you realize that you are growing up, Tavia--or, pretty near?”

“‘Pretty near,’ or ‘near pretty’?” asked Tavia, making a little face at her.

“Baiting your hook for a compliment, I see,” laughed Dorothy. “Well, you get none, Miss. I want you to behave. Think!”

Tavia immediately struck an attitude that seemed possible for only a jointed doll to get into. “Business of thinking,” she said.

“Suppose anybody should see you?” pursued Dorothy, admonishingly.

“Then you do expect the boys to motor in by this road?” cried Tavia. “Sly Puss!”

“No, Ma’am. I am not thinking of Ned and Nat--or even of Bob Niles.”

Tavia made another little face at mention of Bob’s name. “Poor Bob!” she sighed. “No fun for him this summer. His father says he must go to work and begin to learn the business--whatever that may mean. Bob wrote me a dreadfully mournful letter. It almost tempted me to go to the same town and get a job in his father’s office, and so alleviate the poor boy’s misery.”

“You wouldn’t!” gasped Dorothy.

“Got to go to work somewhere,” decided Tavia. “And I hate housework and cleaning up after a lot of children.”

“But just think! how proud your father will be to have you at the head of the household. And remember, too, how much your brothers and sisters need you.”

“Goodness, Doro! You talk like the back end of the spelling-book--where all the hard words are. And the hardest word in the whole vocabulary is ‘duty.’ Don’t remind me of it while I am here with you at North Birchlands.”

“And think!” cried Dorothy, giving a little skip as they walked on. “Think! we are not a week away from dear old Glenwood School yet, and to-day Aunt Winnie’s surprise is coming. Gracious, Tavia! I can scarcely wait for ten o’clock.”

“I know--I know,” said Tavia. “If your Aunt Winnie wasn’t the very dearest little gray-haired, pink-cheeked woman who ever lived, I’d have shaken the secret out of her long ago. I just would! And we can’t even guess what the surprise is going to be like.”

“Goodness! No!” gasped Dorothy. “I’ve given up guessing. I know it is something perfectly scrumptious, but nothing like anything we ever had before.”

“I hope, whatever it is, that I’ll be in it,” groaned Tavia.

“I am sure you will be, or Aunt Winnie wouldn’t have invited you here to her home at just this time,” declared Dorothy.

They were walking down the shady road toward the railroad station “killing time,” before the family conference which had been called for ten o’clock.

Nat and Ned White, Dorothy’s cousins, had gone off in their auto, the Fire Bird, on an errand, and the girls had an idea they might come home by this route, and so pick them up.

“Hush!” cried Tavia, suddenly. “Methinks I hear footsteps approaching on horseback.”

“That’s no horse you hear,” Dorothy said. “It is somebody walking on the bridge over the brook.”

There was a turn in the road just ahead and the girls could not see the bridge. But in a moment they could descry the figure of a man striding toward them.

“This must have been what you were he-heing for,” whispered Dorothy.

“How romantic!” was Tavia’s utterance.

“What is romantic about a man coming up from the station?”

“Don’t you see his long, silky black mustache? And his long hair and broad hat? Goodness! he’s a picture.”

“Yes. The stage picture of a villain--_Simon Legree_ type,” scoffed Dorothy. “That red silk handkerchief sticking out of his pocket--and the big diamond in his shirt front--and another flashing on his finger----”

“My!” gasped Tavia, clasping her hands. “He might have stepped right out of Bret Harte. Ah-ha! ah-ha! Jack Dalton! unhand me!”

“Hush, Tavia!” begged her chum. “He will hear you.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Tavia, suddenly disturbed. “He’s looking at us--and he’s crossing over to this side of the road.”

“Well, don’t you look at him any more and--_we’ll_ cross the road, too.”

“Do you suppose he eats little girls?” queried Tavia, with a most ridiculous air.

Dorothy felt as though she wanted to shake her chum. But then, she frequently felt that desire. The man was too near for her to speak again, but the girls crossed the road suddenly.