CELIA MORAN, OF THE “FINDLING”
“To the rescue!” shrieked Tavia, charging back to the stepping stones.
“Forward, my bold hearties! Man overboard! Who’s got a rope?”
Then she lost the power of speech in a burst of laughter; for certain
it was, poor Ned Ebony was an awfully funny sight!
But Dorothy was at hand to do something practical. She sprang back upon
the nearest boulder to the one that had turned under her unfortunate
schoolmate, and in half a minute she had dragged Edna out of the cold
water.
“Oh! _oh!_ OH!” sputtered Edna in _crescendo_. “I--I’m drowned--dead!
Oh, do help me out! You mean thing, Tavia! Oh, I’m frozen!”
The water was ice cold, and the temperature of the air was close to the
freezing point. This adventure might easily become serious, and Dorothy
knew it.
“We must hurry her to the Belding station,” she cried. “Come on,
Neddie! You must run.”
“Run? I can’t. See how water-soaked my skirt is. I _can’t_ run.”
“You must!” declared Dorothy. “Come, Tavia--take her other hand. Have
you her bag, Cologne? We’ll run ahead with her and see if we can find
somebody to take her in. She must be dried and have other clothing. Oh,
hurry!”
“I can’t run, Doro Dale! I tell you I can’t,” wailed the saturated girl.
But they made her hurry, and in fifteen minutes had her in the sitting
room belonging to the station agent’s wife, where she was helped to
disrobe, dried, dosed with hot tea, and finally managed to dress
herself in dry garments borrowed from the bags of her schoolmates, the
contents of her own bag being wet, too.
There was no chance to get on to Glenwood for two hours; so the party
of schoolgirls must of necessity occupy themselves as best they might
around the Belding station. Meanwhile a better introduction to Dorothy
Dale and her friends, as well as a brief sketch of “what has gone
before” in this series, may not come amiss.
In “Dorothy Dale: A Girl of To-day” my heroine was some three years
younger than she is when she makes her bow in this present volume. But
even then she was a bright, sprightly girl, more thoughtful than the
average of her age, perhaps; yet thoroughly a _girl_. Nevertheless,
because of the illness of her father, Major Dale, of Dalton (she was
motherless) Dorothy took up the work of publishing his weekly paper,
_The Dalton Bugle_.
At that time the paper was all the Dales had to depend on for a
livelihood; therefore Dorothy’s success as a publisher and editor
meant much to herself and her immediate family which, beside the
Major, consisted of her two much younger brothers, Joe and Roger. With
her closest chum, Octavia Travers, Dorothy had many adventures while
running the paper--some merely amusing but others of a really perilous
nature.
Dorothy, however, survived these adventures, Major Dale recovered, and
in the end secured a generous legacy which had been left him, which
enhancement of the family’s fortune made possible the writing of the
second volume of the series: “Dorothy Dale at Glenwood School.”
This story served, too, to introduce more effectually Dorothy’s aunt,
Mrs. Winnie White, and her two boys, Nat and Ned, who lived at North
Birchlands and with whom Major Dale and his motherless children had
now, for some time, made their home. At school Dorothy had some fun,
many adventures, and several little troubles; but with the help and
companionship of Tavia, who was enabled to go to the school, too, after
a very few months both chums decided that Glenwood was the very finest
school “that ever happened.”
“Dorothy Dale’s Great Secret” came very nearly being Tavia Travers’
undoing, and that sprightly damsel’s adventures, and her friend’s
wholesome influence over her, are fully related in the third volume of
the above name.
In the fourth volume, “Dorothy Dale and Her Chums,” Dorothy came into
really startling association with some gypsies and their queens; but
there is likewise in the story plenty of school fun and excitement and
almost a rebellion of the Glenwood girls against a harsh teacher who
had charge while Mrs. Pangborn, the principal, was away.
Dorothy and her chums, with the help of Nat and Ned White and some of
their friends, solved the mystery of the “castle” in the next volume,
which is well entitled, “Dorothy Dale’s Queer Holidays.” The holidays
were queer, indeed, and there was a time when serious trouble seemed to
threaten them all.
In “Dorothy Dale’s Camping Days,” the sixth volume of the series,
Dorothy was mistaken for a demented girl who had escaped from a
sanitarium, and our heroine suffered imprisonment and much anxiety
before the mistake was explained. In this, as in “Dorothy Dale’s
School Rivals,” the seventh book, Tavia Travers had a prominent part
in the action of the story; but Tavia was a flyaway and often Dorothy
was anxious about her. The irresponsible Tavia had a heart of gold,
however, and her love for Dorothy, and her loyalty to her in any and
every difficulty, kept the girl from going very far wrong.
The girls had boarded the train for Glenwood, which had met this
obstruction of the burning bridge, after the winter vacation; and that
vacation had been spent by Dorothy and Tavia in New York. The account
of the fun and adventures they had there is too long to tell here, but
it is all related in the volume next preceding this, entitled, “Dorothy
Dale in the City.”
The chums not only found the great metropolis a veritable fairyland
of surprises, but they had adventures galore. By a fortunate turn of
circumstances the two girls were able to save Dorothy’s Aunt Winnie
from the machinations of a dishonest real estate agent who had been
handling some of that lady’s property; and likewise they had been able
to befriend Miss Mingle, the music teacher at Glenwood School, and her
invalid sister.
As the other girls were looking after Ned Ebony, and offering
her the contents of their own bags--from “mule” slippers to
powder-puffs--Dorothy was not needed; so she went back to the railroad
station to make sure that no train was made up for Glenwood without her
and her friends being aware of it.
There, in the waiting room, she spied a tall, burly woman, with a very
hard red face, who had just placed upon one of the benches a little
girl of some six or seven years. The child was poorly dressed, and
although she was not crying, she looked very woe-begone indeed.
The big woman gave the child a little shake when she had placed her on
the bench.
“There now, Celia Moran!” she snapped. “You stay put; will yer? I never
seen no child more like an eel than _you_ be.”
“Am--am I really like a--neel, Mrs. Hogan?” demanded the little girl,
timidly. “Do--does a--neel have feets an’ hands?”
“You shet up with your questions!” commanded the woman, shaking a
finger at her. “As sure as me name’s Ann Hogan I’d never tuk ye from
that Findling Asylum if I’d knowed ye had a tongue in your mout’ that’s
hung in the middle and wags both ends. Sorra the day I tuk ye!”
Little Celia Moran put a tentative finger in her mouth to see if it was
verily so--that her tongue was “hung” different from other people’s
tongues.
“Are--are you _sure_ my tongue’s that way, Mrs. Hogan?” she asked,
plaintively as the big woman was turning away. “It--it _feels_ all
right.”
“Now, you shet up!” warned Mrs. Hogan, wrathfully. “Ax me another
question an’ I’ll spank ye--so I will! I’m goin’ now to find Jim
Bentley’s waggin’. Do you sit right there still--don’t move! If ye do,
I’ll know it when I come back an’ ’twill be the wuss for ye.”
With this threat the big woman departed with an angry stride. Dorothy
had stopped to listen to the conversation; and she was greatly
interested in the little girl. She immediately went and sat down by
Celia Moran.
She was not a very big girl for her age, being thin and “wriggly.”
It did seem quite impossible for her to keep either her limbs or her
tongue still.
But she was, without doubt, a most appealing little thing. Dorothy
smiled at her, and Dorothy’s smile was bound to “make friends” with any
one.
“I guess you don’t know me; do you?” asked the child, looking up from
under long, black lashes at Dorothy. Those lashes, and the velvety
black eyes they almost hid, were all the really pretty features the
child possessed. She was not plump enough to be pretty of form, and the
expression of her features was too shrewd and worldly-wise to make a
child of her age attractive.
“I guess you don’t know me; do you?” she repeated, looking in a sly
little way at Dorothy.
“Oh, yes, I do,” declared Dorothy Dale, laughing outright. “You are
Celia Moran,” she added, remembering the name the sour-faced woman had
used.
“But you don’t know where I come from?”
The ugly gingham uniform she wore told _that_ story only too well.
Dorothy became grave at once.
“You come from some orphan asylum, my dear.”
“From the Findling,” said the little girl, pursing up her lips and
nodding.
“From a foundling asylum?”
“Yes’m. But I wasn’t really a ‘findling.’ I didn’t come there like the
babies do. _I_ was two an’ a ha’f years old when they took me in. That
ain’t no baby; is it?”
“Two and a half? Why, that’s a _big_ girl,” agreed Dorothy.
“’Course it is. But my papa had been dead a long time; and my mamma,
too. And then my auntie died, so I had to go to the Findling.”
“And wasn’t there anybody else to look out for you?” asked the
interested Dorothy.
“Only Tom. And he went away.”
“Tom who?”
“Tom Moran. He’s my brother. I don’t suppose _you_ know him; do you?”
“I don’t think I do,” said Dorothy, shaking her head.
“Oh, you’d remember him--of course,” confided Celia, impressively.
“For he is so big, and strong, and--and red-headed. Yes. He’s got
awful red hair. And he builds bridges, and things. Oh, I can remember
him--_just as easy_! So I must have been a big girl when they brought
me to the Findling.”
“And you haven’t seen your brother since?”
“No’m. And he’d gone away before auntie died. That’s why he doesn’t
come for me, I s’pose. So the matron says. He don’t know where I is,”
she added, with a little sigh.
“And now Mrs. Hogan’s got me. She’s tooked me to bring up. And she says
she’s going to bring me up right strict,” added the child, pursing her
lips and shaking her head in her queer, old-fashioned way. “She spects
it’s goin’ to be jes’ a _job_ to do it!”