“DO YOU UNDERSTAND TAVIA?”
“You got this old timer running round in circles, Miss Tavia, when you
ask about a feller named Garford Knapp anywhere in this latitude, and
working for a feller named Bob. There’s more ‘Bobs’ running ranches out
here than there is bobwhites down there East where you live. Too bad
you can’t remember this here Bob’s last name, or his brand.
“Now, come to think, there was a feller named ‘Dimples’ Knapp used
to be found in Desert City, but not in Hardin. And you ought to see
Hardin—it’s growing some!”
* * * * *
This was a part of what was in Lance Petterby’s letter. Had Nat White
been allowed to read it he would have learned something else—something
that not only would have surprised him and his brother and cousin,
but would have served to burn away at once the debris of trouble that
seemed suddenly heaped between Tavia and himself.
It was true that Tavia had kept up her correspondence with the
good-natured and good-looking cowboy in whom, while she was West, she
had become interested, and that against the advice of Dorothy Dale. She
did this for a reason deeper than mere mischief.
Lance Petterby had confided in her more than in any of the other
Easterners of the party that had come to the big Hardin ranch. Lance
was in love with a school teacher of the district while the party from
the East was at Hardin; and now he had been some months married to the
woman of his choice.
When Tavia read bits of his letters, even to Dorothy, she skipped all
mention of Lance’s romance and his marriage. This she did, it is true,
because of a mischievous desire to plague her chum and Ned and Nat. Of
late, since affairs had become truly serious between Nat and herself,
she would have at any time explained the joke to Nat had she thought of
it, or had he asked her about Lance.
The very evening previous to the arrival of this letter from the
cowpuncher to which Nat had so unwisely objected, Nat and Tavia had
gone for a walk together in the crisp December moonlight and had talked
very seriously.
Nat, although as full of fun as Tavia herself, could be grave; and he
made his intention and his desires very plain to the girl. Tavia would
not show him all that was in her heart. That was not her way. She was
always inclined to hide her deeper feelings beneath a light manner and
light words. But she was brave and she was honest. When he pinned her
right down to the question, yes or no, Tavia looked courageously into
Nat’s eyes and said:
“Yes, Nat. _I do._ But somebody besides you must ask me before I will
agree to—to ‘make you happy’ as you call it.”
“For the good land’s sake!” gasped Nat. “Who’s business is it but ours?
If you love me as I love you——”
“Yes, I know,” interrupted Tavia, with laughter breaking forth. “‘No
knife can cut our love in two.’ But, _dear_——”
“Oh, Tavia!”
“Wait, honey,” she whispered, with her face close pressed against his
shoulder. “No! don’t kiss me now. You’ve kissed me before—in fun. The
next time you kiss me it must be in solemn earnest.”
“By heaven, girl!” exclaimed Nat, hoarsely. “Do you think I am fooling
now?”
“No, boy,” she whispered, looking up at him again suddenly. “But
somebody else must ask me before I have a right to promise what you
want.”
“Who?” demanded Nat, in alarm.
“You know that I am a poor girl. Not only that, but I do not come from
the same stock that you do. There is no blue blood in my veins,” and
she uttered a little laugh that might have sounded bitter had there not
been the tremor of tears in it.
“What nonsense, Tavia!” the young man cried, shaking her gently by the
shoulders.
“Oh no, Nat! Wait! I am a poor girl and I come of very, very common
stock. I don’t mean I am ashamed of my poverty, or of the fact that my
father and mother both sprang from the laboring class.
“But you might be expected when you marry to take for a wife a girl
from a family whose forebears were _something_. Mine were not. Why, one
of my grandfathers was an immigrant and dug ditches——”
“Pshaw! I had a relative who dug a ditch, too. In Revolutionary times——”
“That is it exactly,” Tavia hastened to say. “I know about him. He
helped dig the breastworks on Breeds Hill and was wounded in the Battle
of Bunker Hill. I know all about that. Your people were Pilgrim and
Dutch stock.”
“Immigrants, too,” said Nat, muttering. “And maybe some of them left
their country across the seas for their country’s good.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the shrewd Tavia. “Being an immigrant in
America in sixteen hundred is one thing. Being an immigrant in the
latter end of the nineteenth century is an entirely different pair of
boots.”
“Oh, Tavia!”
“No. Your mother has been as kind to me—and for years and years—as
though I were her niece, too, instead of just one of Dorothy’s friends.
She may have other plans for her sons, Nat.”
“Nonsense!”
“I will not answer you,” the girl cried, a little wildly now, and began
to sob. “Oh, Nat! Nat! I have thought of this so much. Your mother must
ask me, or I can never tell you what I want to tell you!”
Nat respected her desire and did not kiss her although she clung,
sobbing, to him for some moments. But after she had wiped away her
tears and had begun to joke again in her usual way, they went back to
the house.
And Nat White knew he was walking on air! He could not feel the path
beneath his feet.
He was obliged to go to town early the next morning, and when he
returned, as we have seen, just before dinner, he brought the mail bag
up from the North Birchland post-office.
He could not understand Tavia’s attitude regarding Lance Petterby’s
letter, and he was both hurt and jealous. Actually he was jealous!
“Do you understand Tavia?” he asked his cousin Dorothy, right after
dinner.
“My dear boy,” Dorothy Dale said, “I never claimed to be a seer. _Who_
understands Tavia—fully?”
“But you know her better than anybody else.”
“Better than Tavia knows herself, perhaps,” admitted Dorothy.
“Well, see here! I’ve asked her to marry me——”
“Oh, Nat! my dear boy! I am so glad!” Dorothy cried, and she kissed her
cousin warmly.
“Don’t be so hasty with your congratulations,” growled Nat, still red
and fuming. “She didn’t tell me ‘yes.’ I don’t know now that I want her
to. I want to know what she means, getting letters from that fellow out
West.”
“Oh, Nat!” sighed Dorothy, looking at him levelly. “Are you _sure_ you
love her?”
He said nothing more, and Dorothy did not add a word. But Tavia waited
in vain that evening for Mrs. White to come to her and ask the question
which she had told Nat his mother must ask for him.