Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
[Illustration: “NO, DADDY,” SHE SAID, “I—I THINK I—I AM IN LOVE.”
_Dorothy Dale’s Engagement_ _Page 165_
]
DOROTHY DALE’S
ENGAGEMENT
BY
MARGARET PENROSE
AUTHOR OF “DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY,” “DOROTHY
DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL,” “DOROTHY DALE IN
THE CITY,” “THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
BOOKS BY MARGARET PENROSE
_12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price, per volume, 75 cents, postpaid_
THE DOROTHY DALE SERIES
DOROTHY DALE: A GIRL OF TO-DAY
DOROTHY DALE AT GLENWOOD SCHOOL
DOROTHY DALE’S GREAT SECRET
DOROTHY DALE AND HER CHUMS
DOROTHY DALE’S QUEER HOLIDAYS
DOROTHY DALE’S CAMPING DAYS
DOROTHY DALE’S SCHOOL RIVALS
DOROTHY DALE IN THE CITY
DOROTHY DALE’S PROMISE
DOROTHY DALE IN THE WEST
DOROTHY DALE’S STRANGE DISCOVERY
DOROTHY DALE’S ENGAGEMENT
THE MOTOR GIRLS SERIES
THE MOTOR GIRLS
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON A TOUR
THE MOTOR GIRLS AT LOOKOUT BEACH
THE MOTOR GIRLS THROUGH NEW ENGLAND
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CEDAR LAKE
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON THE COAST
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON CRYSTAL BAY
THE MOTOR GIRLS ON WATERS BLUE
THE MOTOR GIRLS AT CAMP SURPRISE
THE MOTOR GIRLS IN THE MOUNTAINS
_Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York_
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
DOROTHY DALE’S ENGAGEMENT
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. “ALONE IN A GREAT CITY” 1
II. G. K. TO THE RESCUE 17
III. TAVIA IN THE SHADE 26
IV. SOMETHING ABOUT “G. KNAPP” 32
V. DOROTHY IS DISTURBED 40
VI. SOMETHING OF A MYSTERY 47
VII. GARRY SEES A WALL AHEAD 57
VIII. AND STILL DOROTHY IS NOT HAPPY 66
IX. THEY SEE GARRY’S BACK 72
X. “HEART DISEASE” 78
XI. A BOLD THING TO DO! 84
XII. UNCERTAINTIES 92
XIII. DOROTHY MAKES A DISCOVERY 101
XIV. TAVIA IS DETERMINED 109
XV. THE SLIDE ON SNAKE HILL 116
XVI. THE FLY IN THE AMBER 127
XVII. “DO YOU UNDERSTAND TAVIA?” 135
XVIII. CROSS PURPOSES 141
XIX. WEDDING BELLS IN PROSPECT 147
XX. A GIRL OF TO-DAY 154
XXI. THE BUD UNFOLDS 162
XXII. DOROTHY DECIDES 169
XXIII. NAT JUMPS AT A CONCLUSION 179
XXIV. THIN ICE 188
XXV. GARRY BALKS 200
XXVI. SERIOUS THOUGHTS 207
XXVII. “IT’S ALL OFF!” 213
XXVIII. THE CASTAWAYS 225
XXIX. SOMETHING AMAZING 235
XXX. SO IT WAS ALL SETTLED 243
DOROTHY DALE’S ENGAGEMENT
CHAPTER I
“ALONE IN A GREAT CITY”
“Now, Tavia!”
“Now, Dorothy!” mocked Octavia Travers, making a little face as she did
so; but then, Tavia Travers could afford to “make faces,” possessing as
she did such a naturally pretty one.
“We must decide immediately,” her chum, Dorothy Dale, said decidedly,
“whether to continue in the train under the river and so to the main
station, or to change for the Hudson tube. You know, we can walk from
the tube station at Twenty-third Street to the hotel Aunt Winnie always
patronizes.”
“With these heavy bags, Doro?”
“Only a block and a half, my dear Tavia. You are a strong, healthy
girl.”
“But I do so like to have people do things for me,” sighed Tavia,
clasping her hands. “And taxicabs are _so_ nice.”
“And expensive,” rejoined Dorothy.
“Of course. That is what helps to make them nice,” declared Tavia.
“Doro, I just love to throw away money!”
“You only think you do, my dear,” her chum said placidly. “Once you had
thrown some of your own money away—some of that your father sent you to
spend for your fall and winter outfit—you would sing a different tune.”
“I don’t believe I would—not if by throwing it away I really made a
splurge, Doro,” sighed Tavia. “I _love_ money.”
“You mean, you love what money enables us to have.”
“Yep,” returned the slangy Tavia. “And taxicab rides eat up money
horribly. We found that out, Doro, when we were in New York before,
that time—before we graduated from dear old Glenwood School.”
“But _this_ isn’t getting us anywhere. To return——”
“‘_Revenons à nos moutons!_’ Sure! I know,” gabbled Tavia. “Let us
return to our mutton. He, he! Have I forgotten my French?”
“I really think you have,” laughed Dorothy Dale. “Most of it. And
almost everything else you learned at dear old Glenwood, Tavia. But,
quick! Decide, my dear. How shall we enter New York City? We are
approaching the Manhattan Transfer.”
“Mercy! So quick?”
“Yes. Just like that.”
“I tell you,” whispered Tavia, suddenly becoming confidential, her
sparkling eyes darting a glance ahead. “Let’s leave it to that nice
man.”
“Who? What man do you mean, Tavia?” demanded Dorothy, her face at once
serious. “Do try to behave.”
“Am behaving,” declared Tavia, nodding. “But I’m a good sport. Let’s
leave it to him.”
“Whom do you mean?”
“You know. That nice, Western looking young man who opened the window
for us that time. He is sitting in that chair just yonder. Don’t you
see?” and she indicated a pair of broad shoulders in a gray coat, above
which was revealed a well-shaped head with a thatch of black hair.
“Do consider!” begged Dorothy, catching Tavia’s hand as though she
feared her chum was about to get up to speak to this stranger. “This is
a public car. We are observed.”
“Little silly!” said Tavia, smiling upon her chum tenderly. “You
don’t suppose I would do anything so crude—or rude—as to speak to the
gentleman? ‘Fie! fie! fie for shame! Turn your back and tell his name!’
And you don’t know it, you know you don’t, Doro.”
Dorothy broke into smiles again and shook her head; her own eyes, too,
dancing roguishly.
“I only know his initials,” she said.
“What?” gasped Tavia Travers in something more than mock horror.
“Yes. They are ‘G. K.’ I saw them on his bag. Couldn’t help it,”
explained Dorothy, now laughing outright. “But decide, dear! Shall we
change at Manhattan Transfer?”
“If _he_ does—there!” chuckled Tavia. “We’ll get out if the nice
Western cowboy person does. Oh! he’s a whole lot nicer looking than
Lance Petterby.”
“Dear me, Tavia! Haven’t you forgotten Lance yet?”
“Never!” vowed Tavia, tragically. “Not till the day of my death—and
then some, as Lance would himself say.”
“You are incorrigible,” sighed Dorothy. Then: “He’s going to get out,
Tavia!”
“Oh! oh! oh!” crowed her chum, under her breath. “You were looking.”
“Goodness me!” returned Dorothy, in some exasperation. “Who could miss
that hat?”
The young man in question had put on his broad-brimmed gray hat. He was
just the style of man that such a hat became.
The young man lifted down the heavy suitcase from the rack—the one on
which Dorothy had seen the big, black letters, “G. K.” He had a second
suitcase of the same description under his feet. He set both out into
the aisle, threw his folded light overcoat over his arm, and prepared
to make for the front door of the car as the train began to slow down.
“Come on, now!” cried Tavia, suddenly in a great hurry.
But Dorothy had to put on her coat, and to make sure that she looked
just right in the mirror beside her chair. All Tavia had to do was to
toss her summer fur about her neck and grab up her traveling bag.
“We’ll be left!” she cried. “The train doesn’t stop here long.”
“You run, then, and tell them to wait,” Dorothy said calmly.
They were, however, the last to leave the car—the last to leave the
train, in fact—at the elevated platform which gives a broad view of the
New Jersey meadows.
“My goodness me!” gasped Tavia, as the brakeman helped them to the
platform, and waved his hand for departure. “My goodness me! We’re
clear at this end of this awful platform, and the tube train stops—and
of course starts—at the far end. A mile to walk with these bags and not
a redcap in sight. Oh, yes! there’s one,” she added faintly.
“Redcap?” queried Dorothy. “Oh! you mean a porter.”
“Yes,” Tavia said. “Of course you would be slow. Everybody’s got a
porter but us.”
Dorothy laughed mellowly. “Who’s fault do you intimate it is?” she
asked. “We might have been the first out of the car.”
“_He’s_ got one,” whispered Tavia.
Oddly enough her chum did not ask “Who?” this time. She, too, was
looking at the back of the well-set-up young man whose initials seemed
to be G. K. He stood confronting an importunate porter, whose smiling
face was visible to the girls as he said:
“Why, Boss, yo’ can’t possibly kerry dem two big bags f’om dis end ob
de platfo’m to de odder.”
The porter held out both hands for the big suitcases carried by the
Western looking young man, who really appeared to be physically much
better able to carry his baggage than the negro.
“I don’t suppose two-bits has anything to do with your desire to tote
my bag?” suggested the white man, and the listening girls knew he must
be smiling broadly.
“Why, Boss, _yo’_ can’t earn two-bits carryin’ bags yere; but _I_ kin,”
and the negro chuckled delightedly as he gained possession of the bags.
“Come right along, Boss.”
As the porter set off, the young man turned and saw Dorothy Dale and
Tavia Travers behind him. Besides themselves, indeed, this end of the
long cement platform was clear. Other passengers from the in-bound
train had either gone forward or descended into the tunnel under the
tracks to reach the north-side platform. The only porter in sight was
the man who had taken G. K.’s bags.
The weight of the shiny black bags the girls carried was obvious.
Indeed, perhaps Tavia sagged perceptibly on that side—and
intentionally; and, of course, her hazel eyes said “Please!” just as
plain as eyes ever spoke before.
Off came the broad-brimmed hat just for an instant. Then he held out
both hands.
“Let me help you, ladies,” he said, with the pleasantest of smiles.
“Seeing that I have obtained the services of the only Jasper in sight,
you’d better let me play porter. Going to take this tube train, ladies?”
“Yes, indeed!” cried Tavia, twinkling with smiles at once, and first to
give him a bag.
Dorothy might have hesitated, but the young man was insistent and
quick. He seized both bags as a matter of course, and Dorothy Dale
could not pull hers away from him.
“You must let us pay your porter, then,” she said, in her quietly
pleasant way.
“Bless you! we won’t fight over that,” chuckled the young man.
He was agreeably talkative, with that wholesome, free, yet chivalrous
manner which the girls, especially the thoughtful Dorothy, had noticed
as particular attributes of the men they had met during their memorable
trip to the West, some months before.
She noticed, too, that his attentions to Tavia and herself were nicely
balanced. Of course, Tavia, as she always did, began to run on in her
light-hearted and irresponsible way; but though the young man listened
to her with a quiet smile, he spoke directly to Dorothy quite as often
as he did to the flyaway girl. He did not seek to take advantage of
Tavia’s exuberant good spirits as so many strangers might have done.
Tavia’s flirtatious ways were a sore trial to her more sober chum; but
this young man seemed to understand Tavia at once.
“Of course, you’re from the West?” Tavia finished one “rattlety-bang”
series of remarks with this direct question.
“Of course I am. Right from the desert—Desert City, in fact,” he said,
with a quiet smile.
“Oh!” gasped Tavia, turning her big eyes on her chum. “Did you hear
that, Doro? Desert City!”
For the girls, during their visit to the West had, as Tavia often
claimed in true Western slang, helped “put Desert City on the map.”
Dorothy, however, did not propose to let this conversation with a
strange man become at all personal. She ignored her chum’s observation
and, as the city-bound tube train came sliding in beside the platform,
she reached for her own bag and insisted upon taking it from the
Westerner’s hand.
“Thank you so much,” she said, with just the right degree of firmness
as well as of gratitude.
Perforce he had to give up the bag, and Tavia’s, too, for there was the
red-capped, smiling negro expectant of the “two-bits.”
“You are _so_ kind,” breathed Tavia, with one of her wonderful
“man-killing” glances at the considerate G. K., as Dorothy’s cousin,
Nat White, would have termed her expression of countenance.
G. K. was polite and not brusk; but he was not flirtatious. Dorothy
entered the Hudson tube train with a feeling of considerable
satisfaction. G. K. did not even enter the car by the same door as
themselves nor did he take the empty seat opposite the girls, as he
might have done.
“There! he is one young man who will not flirt with you, Tavia,” she
said, admonishingly.
“Pooh! I didn’t half try,” declared her chum, lightly.
“My dear! you would be tempted, I believe, to flirt with a blind man!”
“Oh, Doro! Never!” Then she dimpled suddenly, glancing out of the
window as the train swept on. “_There’s_ a man I didn’t try to flirt
with.”
“Where?” laughed Dorothy.
“Outside there beside the tracks,” for they had not yet reached the
Summit Avenue Station, and it is beyond that spot that the trains dive
into the tunnel.
“We passed him too quickly then,” said Dorothy. “Lucky man!”
The next moment—or so it seemed—Tavia began on another tack:
“To think! In fifteen minutes, Doro my dear, we shall be ‘Alone in a
Great City.’”
“How alone?” drawled her friend. “Do you suppose New York has suddenly
been depopulated?”
“But we shall be alone, Doro. What more lonesome than a crowd in which
you know nobody?”
“How very thoughtful you have become of a sudden. I hope you will keep
your hand on your purse, dear. There will be some people left in the
great city—and perhaps one may be a pickpocket.”
The electric lights were flashed on, and the train soon dived into the
great tunnel, “like a rabbit into his burrow,” Tavia said. They had
to disembark at Grove Street to change for an uptown train. The tall
young Westerner did likewise, but he did not accost them.
The Sixth Avenue train soon whisked the girls to their destination, and
they got out at Twenty-third Street. As they climbed the steps to the
street level, Tavia suddenly uttered a surprised cry.
“Look, will you, Doro?” she said. “Right ahead!”
“G. K.!” exclaimed her friend, for there was the young man mounting the
stairs, lugging his two heavy suitcases.
“Suppose he goes to the very same hotel?” giggled Tavia.
“Well—maybe that will be nice,” Dorothy said composedly. “He looks nice
enough for us to get acquainted with him—in some perfectly proper way,
of course.”
“Whew, Doro!” breathed Tavia, her eyes opening wide again. “You’re
coming on, my dear.”
“I am speaking sensibly. If he is a nice young man and perfectly
respectable, why shouldn’t he find some means of meeting us—if he wants
to—and we are all at the same hotel?”
“But——”
“I don’t believe in flirting,” said Dorothy Dale, calmly, yet with a
twinkle in her eyes. “But I certainly would not fly in the face of
Providence—as Miss Higley, our old teacher at Glenwood, would say—and
refuse to meet G. K. He looks like a really nice young man.”
“Doro!” gasped Tavia. “You amaze me! I shall next expect to see the
heavens fall!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said her friend, as they reached the exit of the
tube station and stepped out upon the sidewalk.
There was the Westerner already dickering with a boy to carry his bags.
“_He_ likes to throw money away, too!” whispered Tavia. “I suppose we
must be economical and carry ours.”
“As there seems to be no other boy in sight—yes,” laughed her friend.
“That young man gets the best of us every time,” complained Tavia under
her breath.
“He is typically Western,” said Dorothy. “He is prompt.”
But then, the boy starting off with the heavy bags in a little
box-wagon he drew, the young man whose initials were G. K., turned with
a smile to the two girls.
“Ladies,” he said, lifting his hat again, “at the risk of being
considered impertinent, I wish to ask you if you are going my way? If
so I will help you with your bags, having again cinched what seems to
be the only baggage transportation facilities at this station.”
For once Tavia was really speechless. It was Dorothy who quite coolly
asked the young man:
“Which is your direction?”
“To the Fanuel,” he said.
“That is where we are going,” Dorothy admitted, giving him her bag
again without question.
“Oh!” exclaimed Tavia, “getting into the picture with a bounce,” as she
would have expressed it. “Aren’t you the _handiest_ young man!”
“Thank you,” he replied, laughing. “That is a reputation to make one
proud. I never was in this man’s town before, but I was recommended to
the Fanuel by my boss.”
“Oh!” Tavia hastened to take the lead in the conversation. “We’ve been
here before—Doro and I. And we always stop at the Fanuel.”
“Now, I look on that as a streak of pure luck,” he returned. He looked
at Dorothy, however, not at Tavia.
The boy with the wagon went on ahead and the three voyagers followed,
laughing and chatting, G. K. swinging the girls’ bags as though they
were light instead of heavy.
“I want awfully to know his name,” whispered Tavia, when they came to
the hotel entrance and the young man handed over their bags again and
went to the curb to get his own suitcases from the boy.
“Let’s,” added Tavia, “go to the clerk’s desk and ask for the rooms
your Aunt Winnie wrote about. Then I’ll get a chance to see what he
writes on the book.”
“Nonsense, Tavia!” exclaimed Dorothy. “We’ll do nothing of the kind.
We must go to the ladies’ parlor and send a boy to the clerk, or the
manager, with our cards. This is a family hotel, I know; but the lobby
and the office are most likely full of men at this time in the day.”
“Oh, dear! Come on, then, Miss Particular,” groaned Tavia. “And we
didn’t even bid him good-bye at parting.”
“What did you want to do?” laughed Dorothy. “Weep on his shoulder and
give him some trinket, for instance, as a souvenir?”
“Dorothy Dale!” exclaimed her friend. “I believe you have something up
your sleeve. You seem just _sure_ of seeing this nice cowboy person
again.”
“All men from the West do not punch cattle for a living. And it would
not be the strangest thing in the world if we should meet G. K. again,
as he is stopping at this hotel.”
However, the girls saw nothing more of the smiling and agreeable
Westerner that day. Dorothy Dale’s aunt had secured by mail two rooms
and a bath for her niece and Tavia. The girls only appeared at dinner,
and retired early. Even Tavia’s bright eyes could not spy out G. K.
while they were at dinner.
Besides, the girls had many other things to think about, and Tavia’s
mind could not linger entirely upon even as nice a young man as G. K.
appeared to be.
This was their first visit to New York alone, as the more lively girl
indicated. Aunt Winnie White had sprained her ankle and could not come
to the city for the usual fall shopping. Dorothy was, for the first
time, to choose her own fall and winter outfit. Tavia had come on from
Dalton, with the money her father had been able to give her for a
similar purpose, and the friends were to shop together.
They left the hotel early the next morning and arrived at the first
huge department store on their list almost as soon as the store was
opened, at nine o’clock.
An hour later they were in the silk department, pricing goods and “just
looking” as Tavia said. In her usual thoughtless and incautious way,
Tavia dropped her handbag upon the counter while she used both hands to
examine a particular piece of goods, calling Dorothy’s attention to it,
too.
“No, dear; I do not think it is good enough, either for the money or
for your purpose,” Dorothy said. “The color _is_ lovely; but don’t be
guided wholly by that.”
“No. I suppose you are right,” sighed Tavia.
She shook her head at the clerk and prepared to follow her friend,
who had already left the counter. Hastily picking up what she supposed
to be her bag, Tavia ran two or three steps to catch up with Dorothy.
As she did so a feminine shriek behind her startled everybody within
hearing.
“That girl—she’s got my bag! Stop her!”
“Oh! what is it?” gasped Dorothy, turning.
“Somebody’s stolen something,” stammered Tavia, turning around too.
Then she looked at the bag in her hand. Instead of her own seal-leather
one, it was a much more expensive bag, gold mounted and plethoric.
“There she is! She’s got it in her hand!”
A woman dressed in the most extreme fashion and most expensively,
darted down the aisle upon the two girls. She pointed a quivering,
accusing finger directly at poor Tavia.