BACK TO DALTON
“Dalton! Dalton! Hurrah!”
“Look out--do, Tavia! You’ll be out of the window next.”
“No, I won’t. That isn’t the very _next_ thing I’m going to do.”
“What is ‘next,’ then?”
“Going to hug you!” declared Tavia, and proceeded to put her threat
into execution, smashing Dorothy’s hat down over her eyes, and
otherwise adding to the general “mussed-up condition” resulting from
the long journey from Glenwood to the town which was still Tavia’s
home, and for which Dorothy would always have a soft spot in her heart.
“Oh, dear me!” gasped Tavia. “It is so delightsome, Doro Doodlebug, to
have you really going home with me to stay at my house for two whole
weeks. It is too good to be true!” and out of the window her head went
again, thrust forth far to see the station the train was approaching.
Dorothy made another frantic grab at her skirt.
“Do be careful! You’ll knock your silly head off on a telegraph pole.”
“No loss, according to the opinion of all my friends,” sighed Tavia.
“Do you know the latest definition of ‘a friend’? It’s a person who
stands up for you behind your back and sits down on you _hard_ when you
are in his company.”
The brakes began to grind and Tavia put on her hat and grabbed her hand
baggage.
“Dear old Dalton,” whispered Dorothy, looking through the window with a
mist in her eyes. “What good times we had here when we were just--just
children!”
“Dead oodles of fun!” quoth Tavia. “Come on, Doro. You’ll get carried
past the station and have to walk back from the water-tank.”
But Dorothy was ready to leave in good season. And when the girls got
off the train who should meet them but three smartly-dressed youngsters
who proceeded to greet them with wild yells and an Indian war dance
performed in public on the station platform.
“Oh, Johnny!” gasped Tavia, capturing her own young brother.
“And Joe and Roger!” cried Dorothy. “How did you boys get here ahead of
us? Aren’t you the dears?”
“School closed two days earlier than usual,” explained Joe Dale, who
was now almost as tall as Dorothy and a very manly-looking fellow.
“Don’t kiss me so much on the street, sister,” begged Roger, under his
breath. “Folks will see.”
“And what if?” demanded Dorothy, laughing.
“They’ll think I’m a _little_ boy yet,” said Roger. “And you know I’m
_not_.
“No. You are no longer Dorothy’s baby,” sighed the girl. “She’s lost
her two ‘childers’.”
“Never mind, Sis,” sympathized Joe. “You were awful good to us when we
were small. We sha’n’t forget our ‘Little Mum’ right away; shall we,
Rogue?”
“Is _that_ what the other boys call him at school?” demanded Dorothy,
with her arm still around the little fellow.
“Yep,” laughed Joe. “And he _is_ a rogue. You ought to heard him in
class the other day. Professor Brown was giving a nature lesson and he
asked Rogue, ‘How does a bee sting?’ and Roger says, ‘Just awful!’ What
do you think of that?”
“A graduate of the school of experience,” commented Tavia. “Come on,
now, folks. Joe and Roger are staying at our house, too--for a while.”
She started off, arm in arm with her own brother, and Dorothy followed
with Joe and Roger, the boys carrying all “the traps,” as Johnny called
the baggage.
The present home of the Travers family was much different from that
home as introduced to my readers in “Dorothy Dale: A Girl of To-day”;
for although Mrs. Travers would never be a model housekeeper, the
influence of Tavia was felt in the home even when she was away at
school.
Mr. Travers, too, had succeeded in business and was not only an officer
in the town, and of political importance, but he was interested in a
construction company, and the family was prospering.
Mrs. Travers realized the help and stimulation Dorothy had given to
Tavia, and she welcomed her daughter’s friend very warmly. Tavia “took
hold” immediately and straightened up the house and seized the reins of
government. Tavia was proud and she did not wish Dorothy to see just
how “slack” her mother still was in many ways.
Her own dainty room she shared with Dorothy; and while the latter was
going about, calling on old friends, during the first two days, Tavia
worked like a Trojan to make the whole house spick and span.
“It’s worth a fortune to have you around the house again, Daughter,”
declared Mr. Travers.
“All right, Squire,” she said, laughingly giving him his official
title. “When I get through at Glenwood I reckon I’ll have to be your
housekeeper altogether--eh?”
“And will you be content to come home and stay?” he asked her, pinching
the lobe of her ear.
“Why not?” she demanded, cheerfully.
“But if Dorothy goes to college----?”
“I can’t have Dorothy always. I wish I could,” sighed Tavia. “But I
know, as Grandma Potter says, ‘Every tub must stand on its own bottom.’
I have got to learn to get along without Dorothy _some time_.”
But that night, when she and her chum had gone to bed, she suddenly put
both arms around Dorothy and hugged her--_hard_.
“What is it, dear?” asked Dorothy, sleepily.
“Oh, dear Dorothy Dale!” whispered Tavia. “I hope we marry twins--you
and I. Then we needn’t be separated--much.”
“Marry twins? Mercy!”
“I mean, each of us a twin--twins that belong together,” explained
Tavia. “Then _we_ needn’t be so far apart.”
“What a girl you are, Tavia!” laughed Dorothy, kissing her. “Why, we
won’t have to think about the possibility of our having a chance to be
married----”
“Mercy!” chuckled Tavia, recovering herself. “_What_ an elongated
sentence you’re fixin’ up.”
“Where--where was I?” murmured Dorothy.
“Never mind, Doro. The man who marries either of us will have to agree
to let us live right next door to each other. Isn’t that right?”
“Oh, more than that,” agreed Dorothy. “He’ll have to agree that we
shall be together most of the time anyway. But don’t worry. I think
seriously of being a she philanthropist, and of course no man will want
to marry me then.”
“And I’ll be a--a policewoman--or a doctress,” gasped Tavia. “Either
job will drive ’em away.”
“And--Bob--is--coming--to-morrow,” yawned Dorothy, and the next minute
was asleep.
Before the boys came, however, Dorothy and Tavia went to see Sarah
Ford. And it was on the way back that they had their adventure with the
ox-cart. Of course, it was Tavia’s fault; but the young man driving
the oxen had such a good-natured smile, and such red hair, and so many
freckles----
“No use!” Tavia declared. “I felt just like going up to him on the spot
and calling him ‘brother.’ I know the boys must always have called him
‘Bricktop,’ or ‘Reddy’--and I’m Reddy’s brother, sure,” touching her
own beautiful ruddy hair. “How I _did_ hate to be called ‘Carrots’ when
I went to Miss Ellis’s school, Doro.”
But this isn’t the story of the ox-cart ride. The cart was full of
hay--up to the high sides of it. There were a couple of bags of feed,
too.
“Oh, I ought to know him,” Tavia assured Dorothy. “He’s working for
my father. I remember the old cart. They are digging away the top of
Longreach Hill. Say! couldn’t we ride?”
“Of course, Miss,” said the red-headed and good-natured young man.
“Whaw, Buck! Back, Bright!” He snapped his long whiplash in front of
the noses of the great black steers. They stopped almost instantly, and
in a moment Tavia wriggled herself in upon the hay from behind, and
gave her hand to Dorothy to help her in, too.
“Oh! isn’t this fun?” gasped Tavia, snuggling down in the
sweet-smelling hay, while the span of big beasts swung forward on the
road again.
“We’re too big to play at such games, I s’pose,” said Dorothy, but her
friend interrupted with:
“Wait, for mercy’s sake, till we’re graduated. I’m afraid you’re
going to be a regular _poke_ before long, Doro. Ugh! wasn’t that a
thank-you-ma’am? Just see their broad backs wag from side to side. Why!
they’re as big as elephants!”
“Suppose they should run away?” murmured Dorothy.
But neither believed that was really possible. Only, it was deliciously
exciting to think of careening down the hill behind the great steers,
with no red-headed young man to snap his whip and cry:
“Hawther, Bright! Come up, Buck!”
On the brow of Longreach Hill the red-headed young man stopped the
oxen. It was a steep pitch just before them--then a long slant to
the shallows of the river--quite half a mile from the hilltop to the
river’s edge.
Somebody shouted and beckoned the driver of the oxen away before he
could help the girls out of the cart.
“Wait a moment, ladies,” he begged, with a smile, and hurried to assist
in the moving of a heavy slab of rock.
It was then three youths came running out of the grove, waving their
hats and sticks.
“Oh, look who has come!” cried Tavia, seizing Dorothy’s arm.
“Ned and Nat--and there’s Bob, of course,” laughed Dorothy. “What did I
tell you, lady?”
A dog ran behind the boys--a funny, long bodied, short-legged dog. He
cavorted about as gracefully as an animated sausage.
“Look at the funny dog!” gasped Tavia, immediately appearing to lose
her interest in the three collegians. “Is that a dachshund? Oh-o-o!”
Her scream was reasonable. The dog leaped in front of the steers’
noses. The huge creatures snorted, swung the cart-tongue around, and
lurched forward down the steep descent!
The girls could not get out then. The road was too rocky. The oxen were
really running away. Their tails stiffened out over the front board of
the cart and the cart itself bounded in the air so that the passengers
could only cling and scream.
They were having quite all the excitement even Tavia craved, thank you!