WEDDING BELLS IN PROSPECT
Four days before Christmas Dorothy Dale, her cousins, and Tavia all
boarded the train with Jennie Hapgood, bound for the latter’s home in
Pennsylvania. On Christmas Eve Jennie’s brother Jack was to be married,
and he had written jointly with the young lady who was to be “Mrs.
Jack” after that date, that the ceremony could not possibly take place
unless the North Birchland crowd of young folk crossed the better part
of two states, to be “in at the finish.”
“Goodness me,” drawled Tavia, when this letter had come from Sunnyside
Farm. “He talks as though wedded bliss were something like a sentence
to the penitentiary. How horrid!”
“It is. For a lot of us men,” Nat said, grinning. “No more stag parties
with the fellows for one thing. Cut out half the time one might spend
at the club. And then, there is the pocket peril.”
“The—the _what_?” demanded Jennie. “What under the sun is that?”
“A new one on me,” said Ned. “Out with it. ’Thaniel. What is the
‘pocket peril’?”
“Why, after a fellow is married they tell me that he never knows when
he puts his hand in his pocket whether he will find money there or not.
Maybe Friend Wife has beaten him to it.”
“For shame!” cried Dorothy. “You certainly deserve never to know what
Tavia calls ’wedded bliss.’”
“I have my doubts as to my ever doing so,” muttered Nat, his face
suddenly expressing gloom; and he marched away.
Jennie and Ned did not observe this. Indeed, it was becoming so with
them that they saw nobody but each other. Their infatuation was so
plain that sometimes it was really funny. Yet even Tavia, with her
sharp tongue, spared the happy couple any gibes. Sometimes when she
looked at them her eyes were bright with moisture. Dorothy saw this, if
nobody else did.
However, the trip to western Pennsylvania was very pleasant, indeed.
Dorothy posed as chaperon, and the boys voted that she made an
excellent one.
The party got off gaily; but after a while Ned and Jennie slipped away
to the observation platform, cold as the weather was, and Nat plainly
felt ill at ease with his cousin and Tavia. He grumbled something
about Ned having become “an old poke,” and sauntered into another car,
leaving Tavia alone with Dorothy Dale in their compartment. Almost at
once Dorothy said to her chum:
“Tavia, dear, are you going to let this thing go on, and become worse
and worse?”
“What’s that?” demanded Tavia, a little tartly.
“This misunderstanding between you and Nat? Aren’t you risking your own
happiness as well as his?”
“Dorothy——”
“Don’t be angry, dear,” her chum hastened to say. “Please don’t. I hate
to see both you and Nat in such a false position.”
“How false?” demanded Tavia.
“Because you are neither of you satisfied with yourselves. You are both
wrong, perhaps; but I think that under the circumstances you, dear,
should put forth the first effort for reconciliation.”
“With Nat?” gasped Tavia.
“Yes.”
“Not to save my life!” cried her friend. “Never!”
“Oh, Tavia!”
“You take his side because of that letter,” Tavia said accusingly.
“Well, if _that’s_ the idea, here’s another letter from Lance!” and she
opened her bag and produced an envelope on which appeared the cowboy’s
scrawling handwriting. Dorothy knew it well.
“Oh, Tavia!”
“Don’t ‘Oh, Tavia’ me!” exclaimed the other girl, her eyes bright with
anger. “Nobody has a right to choose my correspondents for me.”
“You know that all the matter is with Nat, he is jealous,” Dorothy said
frankly.
“What right has he to be?” demanded Tavia in a hard voice, but looking
away quickly.
“Dear,” said Dorothy softly, laying her hand on Tavia’s arm, “he told
me he—he asked you to marry him.”
“He never!”
“But you knew that was what he meant,” Dorothy said shrewdly.
Tavia was silent, and her friend went on to say:
“You know he thinks the world of you, dear. If he didn’t he would not
have been angered. And I do think—considering everything—that you ought
not to continue to let that fellow out West write to you——”
Tavia turned on her with hard, flashing eyes. She held out the letter,
saying in a voice quite different from her usual tone:
“I want you to read this letter—but only on condition that you say
nothing to Nat White about it, not a word! Do you understand, Dorothy
Dale?”
“No,” said Dorothy, wondering. “I do _not_ understand.”
“You understand that I am binding you to secrecy, at least,” Tavia
continued in the same tone.
“Why—yes—_that_,” admitted her friend.
“Very well, then, read it,” said Tavia and turned to look out of the
window while Dorothy withdrew the closely written, penciled pages from
the envelope and unfolded them.
In a moment Dorothy cried aloud:
“Oh, Tavia! you wrote him about Mr. Knapp!”
“Yes,” said Tavia.
“Oh, my dear! is _that_ why he wrote you the other time? Of course! And
he says he can’t find him. Dimples Knapp he calls him. Oh, my dear!”
“Well,” said Tavia, in the same gruff voice. “Read on.” She did not
turn from the window.
“Oh, Tavia!” Dorothy said in a moment or two. “Those men are out there
buying up wheat lands—Stiffbold and Lightly. Lance says he has met
them.”
“I am afraid your friend, ‘Garry Owen,’ will be beat,” said Tavia,
shrugging her shoulders. “Do you see what Lance says next?”
“He thinks he may get word of this Knapp he knows in a few days. Thinks
he may be working for a man named Robert Douglas. Oh, Tavia! Of course
he is! That is the name of his employer!”
But Tavia displayed very little interest. “I had forgotten,” she said.
“Bob Douglas! Of course you remember! And Lance says he’ll get word to
him and tip him off, as he calls it, about the land-sharks. Oh, Tavia!”
Her friend still looked out of the window. Dorothy shook her by the
elbow, staring at the written lines of Lance Petterby’s letter.
“What does this mean?” she demanded. “‘Sue sends her best, and so does
Ma.’ Who is Sue?”
“Why, that is Mrs. Petterby, the younger,” drawled Tavia, flashing a
glance at Dorothy.
“Married?” gasped Dorothy.
“According to law,” responded Tavia, solemnly. “And worse. Read on.”
Breathlessly, Dorothy Dale consumed the remainder of the letter. Some
of it she murmured aloud:
“‘The kid is a wonder. You’d ought to see her. Two weeks old to-day
and I bet she could sit a bucking pony. You’re elected godmother, Miss
Tavia, because she is going to be called ‘Octavia Susan Petterby,’
believe me!”
“Oh, Tavia!” finished Dorothy, crumpling the letter in her hand. “And
you never told us a word about it. _That’s_ why you wanted to buy a
silver mug!”
“Yes,” Tavia admitted.
“And they have been married how long?”
“Almost a year. Soon after we came away from Hardin.”
“And you never said a word,” Dorothy said accusingly. “We all
supposed——”
“That I was flirting with poor old Lance. Yes,” said Tavia, her eyes
and voice both hard.
“And why shouldn’t we think so?” asked Dorothy, quietly. “You do so
many queer things. Or you _used_ to.”
“I don’t now,” said her friend, bruskly.
“No. But how were we to know? How was Nat to know?” she added.
Then Tavia turned on her with excitement. “You promised not to tell!”
she said. “Don’t you _dare_ let Nat White know about this letter!”