G. K. TO THE RESCUE
Dorothy Dale and her friend Tavia Travers had often experienced very
serious adventures, but the shock of this incident perhaps was as great
and as thrilling as anything that had heretofore happened to them.
The series of eleven previous stories about Dorothy, Tavia, and their
friends began with “Dorothy Dale: A Girl of To-day,” some years before
the date of this present narrative. At that time Dorothy was living
with her father, Major Frank Dale, a Civil War veteran, who owned and
edited the _Bugle_, a newspaper published in Dalton, a small town in
New York State.
Then Major Dale’s livelihood and that of the family, consisting of
Dorothy and her small brothers, Joe and Roger, depended upon the
success of the _Bugle_. Taken seriously ill in the midst of a lively
campaign for temperance and for a general reform government in Dalton,
it looked as though the major would lose his paper and the better
element in the town lose their fight for prohibition; but Dorothy Dale,
confident that she could do it, got out the _Bugle_ and did much,
young girl though she was, to save the day. In this she was helped by
Tavia Travers, a girl brought up entirely differently from Dorothy, and
who possessed exactly the opposite characteristics to serve as a foil
for Dorothy’s own good sense and practical nature.
Major Dale was unexpectedly blessed with a considerable legacy which
enabled him to sell the _Bugle_ and take his children to The Cedars,
at North Birchland, to live with his widowed sister and her two boys,
Ned and Nat White, who were both older than their cousin Dorothy.
In “Dorothy Dale at Glenwood School,” is related these changes for
the better in the fortunes of the Dale family, and as well there is
narrated the beginning of a series of adventures at school and during
vacation times, in which Dorothy and Tavia are the central characters.
Subsequent books are entitled respectively: “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,” and “Dorothy Dale’s Promise,” in which story the two
friends graduate from Glenwood and return to their homes feeling—and
looking, of course—like real, grown-up young ladies. Nevertheless, they
are not then through with adventures, surprising happenings, and much
fun.
About the time the girls graduated from school an old friend of Major
Dale, Colonel Hardin, passed away, leaving his large estate in the West
partly to the major and partly to be administered for the local public
good. Cattle raising was not so generally followed as formerly in that
section and dry farming was being tried.
Colonel Hardin had foreseen that nothing but a system of irrigation
would save the poor farmers from ruin and on his land was the fountain
of supply that should water the whole territory about Desert City and
make it “blossom as the rose.” There were mining interests, however,
selfishly determined to obtain the water rights on the Hardin Estate
and that by hook or by crook.
Major Dale’s health was not at this time good enough for him to look
into these matters actively or to administer his dead friend’s estate.
Therefore, it is told in “Dorothy Dale in the West,” how Aunt Winnie
White, Dorothy’s two cousins, Ned and Nat, and herself with Tavia, go
far from North Birchland and mingle with the miners, and other Western
characters to be found on and about the Hardin property, including a
cowboy named Lance Petterby, who shows unmistakable signs of being
devoted to Tavia. Indeed, after the party return to the East, Lance
writes to Tavia and the latter’s apparent predilection for the cowboy
somewhat troubles Dorothy.
However, after their return to the East the chums went for a long visit
to the home of a school friend, Jennie Hapgood, in Pennsylvania; and
there Tavia seemed to have secured other—and less dangerous—interests.
In “Dorothy Dale’s Strange Discovery,” the narrative immediately
preceding this present tale, Dorothy displays her characteristic
kindliness and acute reasoning powers in solving a problem that brings
to Jennie Hapgood’s father the very best of good fortune.
Naturally, the Hapgoods are devoted to Dorothy. Besides, Ned and Nat,
her cousins, have visited Sunnyside and are vastly interested in
Jennie. The girl chums now in New York City on this shopping tour,
expect on returning to North Birchland to find Jennie Hapgood there for
a promised visit.
At the moment, however, that we find Dorothy and Tavia at the beginning
of this chapter, neither girl is thinking much about Jennie Hapgood and
her expected visit, or of anything else of minor importance.
The flashily dressed woman who had run after Tavia down the aisle,
again screamed her accusation at the amazed and troubled girl:
“That’s my bag! It’s cram full of money, too.”
There was no great crowd in the store, for New York ladies do not as
a rule shop much before luncheon. Nevertheless, besides salespeople,
there were plenty to hear the woman’s unkind accusation and enough
curious shoppers to ring in immediately the two troubled girls and the
angry woman.
“Give me it!” exclaimed the latter, and snatched the bag out of Tavia’s
hand. As this was done the catch slipped in some way and the handbag
burst open.
It was “cram full” of money. Bills of large denomination were rolled
carelessly into a ball, with a handkerchief, a purse for change,
several keys, and a vanity box. Some of these things tumbled out upon
the floor and a young boy stooped and recovered them for her.
“You’re a bad, bad girl!” declared the angry woman. “I hope they send
you to jail.”
“Why—why, I didn’t know it was yours,” murmured Tavia, quite upset.
“Oh! you thought somebody had forgotten it and you could get away with
it,” declared the other, coarsely enough.
“I beg your pardon, Madam,” Dorothy Dale here interposed. “It was a
mistake on my friend’s part. And _you_ are making another mistake, and
a serious one.”
She spoke in her most dignified tone, and although Dorothy was barely
in her twentieth year she had the manner and stability of one much
older. She realized that poor Tavia was in danger of “going all to
pieces” if the strain continued. And, too, her own anger at the woman’s
harsh accusation naturally put the girl on her mettle.
“Who are _you_, I’d like to know?” snapped the woman.
“I am her friend,” said Dorothy Dale, quite composedly, “and I know her
to be incapable of taking your bag save by chance. She laid her own
down on the counter and took up yours——”
“And where _is_ mine?” suddenly wailed Tavia, on the verge of an
hysterical outbreak. “My bag! My money——”
“Hush!” whispered Dorothy in her friend’s pretty ear. “Don’t become a
second harridan—like this creature.”
The woman had led the way back to the silk counter. Tavia began to claw
wildly among the broken bolts of silk that the clerk had not yet been
able to return to the shelves. But she stopped at Dorothy’s command,
and stood, pale and trembling.
A floorwalker hastened forward. He evidently knew the noisy woman as a
good customer of the store.
“Mrs. Halbridge! What is the matter? Nothing serious, I hope?”
“It would have been serious all right,” said the customer, in her
high-pitched voice, “if I hadn’t just seen that girl by luck. Yes,
by luck! There she was making for the door with this bag of mine—and
there’s several hundred dollars in it, I’d have you know.”
“I beg of you, Mrs. Halbridge,” said the floorwalker in a low tone,
“for the sake of the store to make no trouble about it here. If you
insist we will take the girl up to the superintendent’s office——”
Here Dorothy, her anger rising interrupted:
“You would better not. Mrs. Winthrop White, of North Birchland, is a
charge customer of your store, and is probably just as well known to
the heads of the firm as this—this person,” and she cast what Tavia—in
another mood—would have called a “scathing glance” at Mrs. Halbridge.
“I am Mrs. White’s niece and this is my particular friend. We are here
alone on a shopping tour; but if our word is not quite as good as that
of this—this person, we certainly shall buy elsewhere.”
Tavia, obsessed with a single idea, murmured again:
“But I haven’t got my bag! Somebody’s taken my bag! And all my money——”
The floorwalker was glancing about, hoping for some avenue of escape
from the unfortunate predicament, when a very tall, white-haired and
soldierly looking man appeared in the aisle.
“Mr. Schuman!” gasped the floorwalker.
The man was one of the chief proprietors of the big store. He scowled
slightly at the floorwalker when he saw the excited crowd, and then
raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“This is not the place for any lengthy discussion, Mr. Mink,” said Mr.
Schuman, with just the proper touch of admonition in his tone.
“I know! I know, Mr. Schuman!” said the floorwalker. “But this
difficulty—it came so suddenly—Mrs. Halbridge, here, makes the
complaint,” he finally blurted out, in an attempt to shoulder off some
of the responsibility for the unfortunate situation.
“Mrs. Halbridge?” The old gentleman bowed in a most courtly style. “One
of our customers, I presume, Mr. Mink?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, Mr. Schuman,” the floorwalker hastened to say. “One
of our _very_ good customers. And I am so sorry that anything should
have happened——”
“But what has happened?” asked Mr. Schuman, sharply.
“She—she accuses this—it’s all a mistake, I’m sure—this young lady of
taking her bag,” stuttered Mr. Mink, pointing to Tavia.
“She ought to be arrested,” muttered the excited Mrs. Halbridge.
“What? But this is a matter for the superintendent’s office, Mr.
Mink,” returned Mr. Schuman.
“Oh!” stammered the floorwalker. “The bag is returned.”
“And now,” put in Dorothy Dale, haughtily, and looking straight and
unflinchingly into the keen eyes of Mr. Schuman, “my friend wishes to
know what has become of _her_ bag?”
Mr. Schuman looked at the two girls with momentary hesitation.
There was something compelling in the ladylike look and behaviour of
these two girls—and especially in Dorothy’s speech. At the moment, too,
a hand was laid tentatively upon Mr. Schuman’s arm.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the full, resonant voice that Dorothy had noted
the day before. “I know the young ladies—Miss Dale and Miss Travers,
respectively, Mr. Schuman.”
“Oh, Mr. Knapp—thank you!” said the old gentleman, turning to the tall
young Westerner with whom he had been walking through the store at the
moment he had spied the crowd. “You are a discourager of embarrassment.”
“Oh! blessed ‘G. K.’!” whispered Tavia, weakly clinging to Dorothy’s
arm.