Dorothy Dales Queer Holidays | Page 3

nature, and this, coupled with correct training, was destined to make them men of patience and common sense.
Of course, this time they were only joking, so the "boxing" their mother had somewhat jestingly accused them of was all part of the game.
Dorothy smoothed the cushions of the divan as her aunt advanced into the room. Ned and Nat both attempted to poke the same log in the open grate with the same poker, and the blaze that most unexpectedly shot up at this interference with a well-regulated fire, attending strictly to its own affairs, caused both young men to leap quickly back out of reach of a shower of sparks.
"Whew!" exclaimed Nat, falling over an ottoman that Dorothy had been lately sitting on, and landing very ungracefully at his mother's feet. "Mother, I adore you!" he suddenly exclaimed as he found himself in a suppliant attitude. "Only," he went on ruefully, rubbing his shins, "I did not intend to adore you quite so hard."
"A three-bagger," joked Ned, for indeed his brother's position over the "bag" was not unlike that of a baseball player "hugging the base."
"But you were just saying, as I came in," spoke Mrs. White, "something about Tavia's coming. She has not sent any word--any regrets, or anything of that sort, has she?"
"Why, no," answered Dorothy, "We were just saying that she might be here before we know it--"
"Who said that?" demanded Nat, promptly scrambling to his feet.
"Before we know it," repeated Ned, with special emphasis on the "before."
"However do you bear with them, Doro dear?" asked Mrs. White. "They seem to grow more unmanageable every day."
Then Dorothy, making herself heard above the argument, said:
"Boys, if we are going to meet Tavia--"
"If we are going to meet her!" exclaimed Nat, interrupting his pretty cousin, and putting a great deal of emphasis on the first word. "There's no 'if' in this deal. We are going," and he sprang up and continued springing until he reached his own room, where he proceeded to "slick up some," as he expressed it, while Ned, and Dorothy, too, prepared for the run to the depot in the Fire Bird, as speedy an automobile as could be found in all the country around North Birchland.
"Take plenty of robes," cautioned Mrs. White as the machine puffed and throbbed up to the front door. "It's getting colder, I think, and may snow at any moment."
"No such luck," grumbled Nat. "I never saw such fine, cold weather, and not a flake of snow. What's that about a 'green Christmas, and a fat graveyard'? Isn't there some proverb to that effect?"
"Oh, I surely think it will snow before Christmas," said Dorothy. "And we have plenty of robes, auntie, if the storm should come up suddenly."
"Come down, you mean," teased Ned, who seemed to be in just the proper mood for that sort of thing.
Dorothy laughed in retort. She enjoyed her cousins' good nature, and was never offended at their way of making fun at her expense.
Presently all was in readiness, and the Fire Bird swung out on the cedar-lined road and into the broad highway that led to the railroad station.
"I would just like to bet," remarked the persistent Ned as the station came into view at the end of the long road, "I would just like to bet almost anything that she will not come."
"Take you up!" answered Nat quickly. "I know she'll come."
"Oh, you feel her presence near," joked Ned. "Well, if she comes on time this trip there may be some hope for the poor wretch who may expect her to make good when he has fixed it up with the parson, the organist and--"
"Silly!" cried Dorothy gaily. "A man never pays the organist at--at an affair of that kind," and she blushed prettily.
"No?" questioned Ned in surprise. "Glad to hear it. Here, Nat, take this wheel while I make a note of it. A little thing like that is worth remembering," and he pretended to take out a notebook and jot it down.
When the train glided into the station, with a shrill screeching protest from the sparking wheels and brakes, and when quite a number of persons had alighted and gone their several ways, Dorothy and Nat, who had peered hopefully and anxiously at each passenger, looked rather ruefully at each other. Tavia had not come.
"Well?" asked Nat.
"Let's wait a little longer," suggested Dorothy.
Finally the train started up again, the private carriages and hired hacks had been driven off with scores of passengers and their baggage. Then, and not until she had looked up and down the deserted platforms, did Dorothy admit to Nat:
"She hasn't come!"
"Looks like it," replied the lad, plainly very much disappointed.
Ned, who could see what had happened, clapped his gloved hands in unholy glee.
"Didn't I tell you she'd duck?" he