A PORCINE PICNIC
There were five bows of ribbon laid out in a row on Tavia’s bureau,
each with a cunning little collar of the same attached. Pink,
green--real apple green--mauve, tango and orange.
“What under the sun can she be doing with those?” murmured Dorothy,
when she chanced to see them, and touching the pretty bows lightly with
her fingers. “Why! Tavia must be going to introduce a new style. Are
they ribbon bracelets? How pretty!”
It was the day following the hilarious arrival of “the bad pennies”
at Glenwood School, after the railroad bridge had burned and delayed
them, and Dorothy herself had met little Celia Moran, the girl from the
“Findling.”
Mrs. Pangborn had not yet arrived. She had been delayed by some family
difficulty, it was understood, and really, for these first days of
the new term, “things were going every which-way,” as Tavia herself
declared.
There was a new teacher in charge, too--Miss Olaine. Miss Olaine was
tall, and thin, and grim. Tavia declared she looked just like “a sign
post on the road to trouble.”
“And you want to be careful you don’t fall under her eye, Tavia,”
Cologne had advised. “The girls who have been here through the vacation
say she’s a Tartar.”
“Humph!” the headstrong Tavia had declared, “she may be the cream of
Tartar, for all I care. I shall take the starch out of her.”
Now, had Dorothy Dale chanced to hear this reckless promise of her chum
she might have been more suspicious of the five pretty ribbon bows.
Indeed, she would have been suspicious of every particular thing Tavia
said, or did.
But, as it chanced, Miss Olaine seemed no more harsh or forbidding to
Dorothy than any other teacher. Dorothy was not one to antagonize the
teachers, no matter who they might be.
“Five bows,” murmured Dorothy again. “I wonder just what they can be
for? Why, they’re too small, I do believe--those rings are--for Tavia’s
wrist--or mine.
“Five of them! One for each finger of a hand--one for each of the ‘five
senses,’ I declare!--one for each of Jacob Bensell’s young ones who
live in the cottage down the road. There’s five of _them_.
“And there’s five cows in Middleton’s pasture--though I don’t suppose
Tavia is going to decorate them. And there’s five cunning little pigs
in Jake’s pen--he showed them to me last night,” and Dorothy laughed,
as she touched the pretty bows again. “I can’t imagine----”
In bounced Tavia herself. “Oh, _you_ here?” she cried, and went right
over to the bureau and tumbled the five pretty ribbon bows into her top
drawer and shut the drawer quickly.
“I got here just a minute ahead of you,” said Dorothy.
“Oh!”
“What are the cunning little wristlets for?” demanded Dorothy,
curiously.
“‘Wristlets’?”
“You know what I mean. The ribbons?”
“Oh--now--Doro----”
“What are they for?” repeated Dorothy.
“Just to make curious folk ask questions, I guess,” chuckled Tavia,
her big brown eyes dancing, and just then several of the other girls
tumbled into the room and there was so much noise and talk that Dorothy
quite forgot the ribbon bows.
“That old Olaine is just the meanest----” from Cologne.
“Did you hear what she said to little Luttrell when she couldn’t find
her skates? And Luttrell’s folks can’t buy her skates every day, I
don’t believe,” declared Ned Ebony, hotly.
“Did you hear her, Doro?” demanded Nita Brent.
“No,” admitted Dorothy Dale.
“Why, she told Luttrell not to cry like a baby about it; probably
somebody found them that needed them more than _she_ did. Nasty old----”
“Hold on! Hold on!” advised Dorothy.
Tavia laughed rather harshly. “Miss Olaine is just as comforting as the
rooster was when Mrs. Hen was in tears because one of her little ones
had been sacrificed to make a repast for the visiting clergyman.
“‘Cheer up, Madam,’ said Mr. Rooster. ‘You should rejoice that your son
is entering the ministry. He was poorly qualified for a lay member,
anyhow,’” and Tavia laughed again, as did the others.
“Oh, Tavia, that’s ridiculous,” said Cologne. “Aren’t you sorry for
little Luttrell?”
“And don’t you just hate Miss Olaine?” demanded Ebony.
“Oh, you leave her to me,” said Tavia, cheerfully. “We’ll get square
with her if she stays at Glenwood Hall for long.”
“You would better have a care,” warned Dorothy. “I don’t believe that
the lady will stand much fooling, Tavia.”
“‘Fooling’?” repeated Tavia, making “big eyes” at her chums. “How you
talk! I would not _fool_ with Miss Olaine----”
“I guess not,” cried one of the other girls. “I heard what she said to
Miss Mingle.”
“What was that?”
“She said ‘she hoped she knew how to handle a lot of half-grown, saucy
young-ones!’ Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“Us--young-ones!” gasped Dorothy.
“What a slap at our dignity--and we to graduate in June,” said Cologne,
heavily. “I guess that settles Miss Olaine----”
“You leave her to me,” said Tavia, again, and nodding with emphasis. “I
shall just square things up with her.”
“Oh, Tavia!” cried Edna Black. “What will you do?”
“Nothing at all, I hope,” interposed Dorothy.
Her chum began to giggle. “You just wait,” she said.
“Do, _do_ be careful,” warned Dorothy when the other girls had gone
some time later, leaving her and her chum alone in the dormitory.
“Am I not always careful?” demanded Tavia, opening her big eyes wider
than ever.
“You’re usually careful to get into trouble,” sighed Dorothy.
“Oh, Doro----”
“And see the numbers of times the rest of us have had to help you out.”
“You mean _you_ have had to help me out. You’re a good old thing,
Doro--just like a grandma to me! Come and kiss your youngest
grandchild, Doro--that’s a dear!”
“Go away, do!” cried Dorothy, though she had to laugh at Tavia, too.
“You are as irresponsible as ever.”
“Of course, Granny,” giggled Tavia, as she put a wee dab of talcum
powder on her nose.
“But don’t you _dare_ do anything to make Mrs. Pangborn send you home
before you are properly graduated,” warned Dorothy.
“Suspended from the Glen? Well, I guess not!” cried her friend.
But there was something in the air. Dorothy knew it. Nobody else seemed
to be in the secret but Tavia, however; and for Tavia to have any
secret at all from her chum----
Well, Dorothy could only wait. She was sure Tavia “would show her hand”
before long. But this time the prank was revealed to Dorothy too late
for the latter to save her fly-away friend from the results of her
folly.
The next evening she saw Tavia lurking in the shadow of the hedge down
towards Bensell’s place. Was that Jake’s oldest boy who ran away when
Dorothy approached?
“My goodness! how you startled me!” drawled Tavia when Dorothy pinched
her chum’s plump arm.
“Can’t you let them be in peace, Tavia?” laughed Dorothy, who knew very
well that her chum had not been startled at all.
“_What?_ Oh! Let who be in peace?” demanded Tavia, and then Dorothy, in
amaze, knew her friend _was_ startled.
“The boys. Have you got to practice your fell designs on Sammy Bensell?”
“How ridiculous!” chuckled Tavia, with a toss of her head, and plainly
relieved. “Poor Sammy!”
And even then Dorothy had not suspected the secret. Tavia went back to
the Hall with her. Everything seemed as calm as could be. And then, the
next forenoon, when recitations began in Miss Olaine’s room, the storm
broke.
Behind the desk and platform devoted to the teacher’s use was the door
of a little retiring room. Soon after the class assembled there were
peculiar noises heard in that room. Miss Olaine stood up and looked at
the door.
“Who is in that room, young ladies?” she demanded.
Silence--oh, a great deal of silence! You could cut it with a knife.
And the most amazed-looking person in the room was Tavia Travers.
Miss Olaine threw open the door with a savage sort of exclamation. The
next instant she shrieked shrilly, and hopped into the seat of her own
chair, standing upright there and holding her skirts close about her
ankles.
“Who did this? Who did such an atrocious thing?” cried the teacher.
Out of the room there ran a cunning little white and black pig--and
then another, and another, until the laughing, half-hysterical girls
counted five of the little dears.
Each was scrubbed as clean as ever pig before was scrubbed! And their
little pink eyes, and sharp noses, and pricked-up ears, and queer
little tails, made the cunning little things as pretty as lapdogs.
“Who’d suppose she was afraid of pigs?” Edna Black said afterward. “And
they so cute!”
But Miss Olaine shrieked and shrieked, as the pigs, each with one of
those beautiful ribbon bows at the back of its fat neck, ran around
and around her chair and desk. The platform was so high that they were
afraid to jump down, for they were not more than two spans long.
“Oh, dear me!” groaned Dorothy. “Now Tavia is in for it again,” for
Tavia looked altogether too innocent to escape suspicion.