A GIRL OF TO-DAY
“It was the prettiest wedding I ever saw,” Dorothy Dale declared, as
the party, bound for North Birchland again, climbed aboard the midnight
train at the station nearest Sunnyside Farm.
“And the bride was too sweet for anything,” added Jennie Hapgood, who
was returning to The Cedars as agreed, to remain until after New Year’s.
“Jack looked quite as they always do,” said Ned in a hollow voice.
“As who always do?” demanded Tavia.
“The brooms.”
“‘Brooms’!” cried Dorothy. “Grooms, Ned?”
“He’s a ‘new broom’ all right,” chuckled Edward White. “Poor chap! he
doesn’t know what it means to love, honor, obey, and buy frocks and
hats for a girl of to-day.”
“Pah!” retorted his brother, “you’d like to be in his shoes, Nedward.”
“Me? I—guess—not!” declared Edward. “I have my own shoes to stand in,
thank you,” and Ned looked at Jennie Hapgood with a meaning air.
So the party came back to The Cedars in much the same state as it had
gone to the wedding. Ned and Jennie were so much taken up with each
other that they were frankly oblivious to the mutual attitude of Nat
and Tavia. Dorothy Dale was kept busy warding off happenings that might
attract the particular attention of Major Dale and Aunt Winnie to the
real situation between the two.
Besides, Dorothy had “troubles of her own,” as the saying goes. She
felt that she must decide, and neglect the decision no longer, a very,
very important matter that concerned herself more than it did anybody
else in the world—a matter that she was selfishly interested in.
Ample time had passed now for Dorothy Dale to consider from all
standpoints this really wonderful thing that had come into her life
and had so changed her outlook. On the surface she might seem the same
Dorothy Dale to her friends and relatives; but secretly the whole world
was different to her since that shopping trip she and Tavia had taken
to New York wherein she and her chum had met Garry Knapp.
A thousand times Dorothy had called up the details of every incident
of the adventure—this greatest of all adventures Dorothy Dale had ever
entered upon.
She felt that she should never meet again a man like Garry Knapp. None
of the boys she had known before had ever made much of an impression
on Dorothy Dale’s well-balanced mind. But from the beginning she had
looked upon the young Westerner with a new vision. His reflection
filled the mirror of her thought as splendidly as at first. The
dimple that showed faintly in one bronzed cheek, his rather large but
well-formed features, his mop of black hair, his broad shoulders and
well-set-up body—all these personal attributes belonging to Garry Knapp
were as clearly fixed in Dorothy’s mind now as at first.
So, too, her memory of all that had happened was clear. Garry’s
proffered help in the department store when Tavia was in trouble first
aroused Dorothy to an appreciation of his unstudied kindness. It was
the most natural thing in the world for him to offer aid when he saw
anybody in trouble.
Dorothy blushed now whenever she thought of her doubts of Garry
Knapp when she had seen him so easily fall into conversation with
the department store salesgirl on the street. Why! that was exactly
what he would do—especially if the girl asked him for help. She still
blushed at the remembrance of the jealous feeling that had prompted her
avoidance of the young man until his action was explained. Her pique
had shortened her acquaintanceship with Garry Knapp. She might have
known him far better had it not been for that incident of the shopgirl.
“And my own suspicion was the cause of it. I refused to meet Garry
Knapp as Tavia did. Why! she knows him better than I do,” Dorothy Dale
told herself.
It was after her discovery of why Tavia had been writing to Lance
Petterby and receiving answers from that “happy tho’ married cowboy
person,” to quote Tavia, that Dorothy so searched her own heart
regarding Garry Knapp.
“You are a dear, loyal friend, Tavia,” she told her chum. “But—but
_why_ are you trying so to get in touch with Mr. Knapp?”
“Really want me to tell you?” demanded Tavia.
“Yes.”
“Truly-rooly—black-and-bluely?”
“Of course, dear.”
“Because I have been a regular ivory-kopf!” cried Tavia. “Forgive my
hybrid German. Oh, Dorothy! I didn’t want to tell you, for I hoped
Lance might quickly find your Garry Knapp.”
“_My_ Garry Knapp,” said Dorothy, blushing.
“Yes, my dear. Don’t dodge the fact. We all seem to be suddenly grown
up. We are shucking our shells of maidenhood like crabs——”
“Tavia! Horrors! Don’t!” begged Dorothy.
“Don’t like my metaphor, dear?” chuckled Tavia. But she was grim again
in a moment, continuing: “No use dodging the fact, I repeat. You were
interested in that man from the beginning. Now, weren’t you?”
“Ye—es, Tavia,” admitted her friend.
“And I should have seen that you were. I ought to have known, when you
were put out with him because of that shopgirl, that for that very
reason you were more interested in Garry Knapp than in any other fellow
who ever shined up to you——”
“Tavia! How can you?”
“Huh! Just as e-asy,” responded her friend, with a wicked twinkle in
her eye and mimicking Garry Knapp’s manner of speaking. “Now, listen!”
she hurried on. “That night I took dinner with him alone—the evening
you had the—er—headache and went to bed. ’Member?”
“Oh, yes,” sighed Dorothy, nodding.
“He just pumped me about you,” said Tavia. “And I was just foolish
enough to tell him all about your money—how rich your folks were and
all that.”
“Oh!” and Dorothy flushed again.
“You don’t get it—not yet,” said Tavia, wagging her head. “Afterwards
I remembered how funny he looked when I had told him that you were a
regular ‘sure-enough’ heiress, and I remembered some things he said,
too.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dorothy, faintly.
“Why, I scared him away from you,” blurted out Tavia, almost in tears
when she thought of what she called her “ivory-headedness.” “I know
that he was just as deeply smitten with you, dear, as—as—well, as ever
a man could be! But he’s poor—and he’s game. I think that is why he
went off in such a hurry and without trying _very_ hard to see you
again.”
“Oh, Tavia! Do you believe that is so?” and the joy in Dorothy’s voice
could not be mistaken.
“Well!” exclaimed Tavia, “isn’t that pretty bad? You act as though you
were pleased.”
Dorothy blushed again, but she was brave. She gazed straight into
Tavia’s eyes as she said:
“I am pleased, dear. I am pleased to learn that possibly it was not his
lack of interest in poor little me that sent him away from New York so
hastily—at least, without making a more desperate effort to see me.”
“Oh, Doro!” cried Tavia, suddenly putting both arms around her friend.
“Do you actually mean it?”
“Mean what?”
“That you l-l-_like_ him so much?”
Dorothy laughed aloud, but nodded emphatically. “I l-l-_like_ him just
as much as that,” she mocked. “And if it’s only my father’s money in
the way——”
“And your own. You really will be rich when you are twenty-one,” Tavia
reminded her. “I tell you, that young man was troubled a heap when
he learned from me that you were so well off. If you had been a poor
girl—if you had been _me_, for instance—he would never have left New
York City without knowing his fate. I could see it in his eyes.”
“Oh, Tavia!” gasped Dorothy, with clasped hands and shining eyes.
“My dear,” said her friend, with serious mouth but dancing orbs. “I
never would have thought it possible—of _you_. ‘Love like a lightning
bolt’—just like that. And the cautious Dorothy!” Then she went on:
“But, Dorothy, how will you ever find him?”
“You have done your best, Tavia,” her friend said, nodding. “I
suppose I might have tried Lance Petterby, too. But now I shall put
Aunt Winnie’s lawyers to work out there. If possible, Mr. Knapp must
be found before those real estate sharks buy his land. But if the
transaction is completed, we shall have to reach him in some other way.”
“Dorothy! You sound woefully strong-minded. Do you mean to go right
after the young man—just as though it were leap year?” and Tavia
giggled.
“I hope,” said Dorothy Dale, girl of to-day that she was, “I have
too much good sense to lose the chance of showing the man I love
that he can win me, because of any foolish or old-fashioned ideas of
conventionalities. If Garry Knapp thinks as much of me as I do of him,
his lack of an equal fortune sha’n’t stand in the way, either.”
“Oh, Doro! it sounds awful—but bully!” Tavia declared, her eyes round.
“Do you mean it?”
“Yes,” said Dorothy, courageously.
“But suppose he is one of those stubborn beings you read about—one of
the men who will not marry a girl with money unless he has a ‘working
capital’ himself?”
“That shall not stand in our way.”
“What do you mean?” gasped Tavia. “Not that you would give up your
money for him?”
“If I find I love him enough—yes,” said Dorothy, softly.