“JES’ THE CUTEST LITTLE THING”
The woodchuck bake in the grove behind the old school house, which
Dorothy and Tavia used to attend, was pronounced a success by the three
youngsters. Of course, there were not many invited guests, for aside
from three woodchucks and a half bushel of sweet potatoes, there were
but half a dozen squirrels baked in the ashes of a huge campfire. These
were not sufficient to supply a regiment, as Tavia herself said--and
Tavia was a generous body.
Besides the two girl friends and the three small boys, there were the
four freshmen, three of whom had frankly come down here to Dalton for
this spring vacation just because Dorothy and Tavia were here.
These individuals could not really be counted as guests--any of them.
So Tom Moran was really the only guest at the bake. He had recovered
Dorothy’s hat and jacket and other possessions from the Daggetts and
their friends, and when he brought them to Tavia’s, Dorothy and her
chum made Tom come along with them to the picnic.
Ned White had gone to Mr. Rouse, the farmer, and paid for the burned
fodder stack.
“Eight dollars, young gentlemen,” said Ned, rather grimly, to Joe and
Roger Dale and Tavia’s brother. Rather a high price to pay per pound
for woodchuck meat; and Nat figured it out to cost something like sixty
or seventy cents per pound.
“Oh! don’t talk about it that way, Nat,” begged Joe. “It will taste so
of money that none of us kids will want to eat it.”
They all got pretty well acquainted with Tom Moran that day. And he
really was a fine young fellow. Although his book learning might not be
extensive, he had traveled much and was one of those fortunate persons
who remember, and can talk of, what they have seen.
Tom Moran was going back with the girls the next day, for the vacation
was close upon its end. At first he was not decided what he should do
after getting little Celia from Mrs. Hogan. But Tavia and Dorothy fixed
_that_.
“Tom,” said Mr. Travers, when the party returned from the woodchuck
bake, “I’ve been talking with my partners and we want you to settle
down here in Dalton and work for us.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Travers,” said the young man, undecidedly. “You
see, I had some words with Simpson----”
“Oh, you won’t be under Simpson--and we won’t put a mechanic like you
to driving an ox-team, either. There is a better job than that here for
you,” and Mr. Travers talked seriously with the red-haired youth for an
hour.
“The trouble with you is, you have never settled down. You haven’t had
an anchor. Now, Celia can’t travel about with you, and she’s got to be
your care for some years to come.”
“I know. If I can get her away from that Hogan woman. I may have
trouble there--if the foundling asylum folk let Mrs. Hogan adopt her.”
“If you want help in _that_ matter, you trust to Major Dale, Dorothy’s
father. He’ll see you through, Tom. And so will your friends here in
Dalton. We want you to come back here and go to work.”
Thus it was arranged. Tom, the next day, appeared at the railroad
station in a neat suit and with a new grip in his hand. The grip was
practically empty, he told Dorothy; but he proposed to get it filled
up with nice clothes for Celia if he could get the child away from her
taskmistress at once.
The White boys and Abe Perriton and Bob Niles traveled back to college
in the _Firebird_, so Dorothy and Tavia said good-bye to them before
they left Dalton. Bob Niles tried to get Tavia off by herself to talk
on the last evening they were together; but Tavia was suddenly very
strict with him.
“You are nothing but a college freshman,” she told him, coolly, “and a
very _fresh_ freshman at that! Don’t you think for a minute that you
are a grown-up young man--you are not. And _I_ am only three months,
or so, older than I was when we parted in New York. It’s going to be a
long, long time before either Doro or I will begin to think seriously
of young men. Besides--you’re not a twin,” she added, and ran away from
him, leaving poor Bob greatly puzzled by her final phrase.
They were going back to Glenwood a day early, because of Tom’s anxiety.
When the train reached the school station only Tavia got off; Dorothy
went on to Belding with Celia’s brother.
At the station they hired a carriage and an hour later drove into the
lane leading to Mrs. Hogan’s home.
It was the first real spring day. The grass “was getting green by
the minute,” so Tom said; the trees were budding bountifully; every
little rill and stream was full and dancing to its own melody over the
pebbles; the early feathered comers, from swamp and woodland, were
splitting their throats in song.
And when the two drove into the yard there were sounds of altercation
from the house--the first harsh sounds they had heard since starting
from Belding.
“And that’s the way ye do ut--heh?” exclaimed Mrs. Hogan’s strident
voice. “After all I been tellin’ yez. Ye air the most impident,
useless, wasteful crature that ever I come across! An’ not a bit of
gratichude have ye for me takin’ yez out of the Findling an’ givin’ ye
a home, an’ sumpin’ to ate, an’ a place ter lie down in.’ Bad ’cess ter
yez, Cely Moran! Sorry the day I ever tuk yez----”
“I--I’m so sorry,” interposed Celia’s feeble little voice.
“Won’t--won’t you please take me back there, ma’am?”
“Tak’ ye back where?” demanded the woman, in an uglier tone, were that
possible. “Tak’ ye back where?”
“To the Findling, ma’am. Oh, dear me!” sobbed Celia, “I was a great
deal happier there!”
“Ungrateful----”
“No, ma’am. It isn’t that,” declared the child, grown desperate at
last, perhaps. “But you don’t love me. You don’t love any little girls.
And I’d go without a sup to eat, or a roof like you give me, or--or a
bed, jes’ to be loved a little.”
“Plague o’ me life!” ejaculated the woman.
They heard her swift and heavy foot across the floor. The child cried
out before she was struck. Tom had helped Dorothy out of the carriage
and was tying the horse. Swift of foot, the girl from Glenwood was
before him at the door.
“Celia!” she cried, before the echo of the slap crossed the kitchen.
Celia’s whimper was changed to a scream of delight. She rushed across
the room into Dorothy’s arms.
“How dare you, Mrs. Hogan?” exclaimed Dorothy, her beautiful eyes fairly
flashing with anger. “How dare you?”
“Who are ye, now? What! come to make more trouble, heh?” exclaimed the
woman, advancing in her rage in a very threatening way toward Dorothy.
But Dorothy stood her ground, while the child cowered behind her. “You
cannot scare me, Mrs. Hogan,” declared Dorothy. “You dare not strike
me. Nor shall you ever touch this little one again.”
“Impidence!” gasped the woman. “I’ll show ye----”
“Show me, missus,” growled Tom Moran, his face very much flushed and
his red hair seeming to stand fairly on end.
He had entered, put Dorothy and Celia gently to one side, and stood
before the ogress. “Show me, missus,” he said again. “I’m more like
your size.”
“Who are you?” demanded the farm woman, taken aback.
But Celia’s voice was again heard--and this time it was no whimper. She
suddenly bounded upon Tom and clasped both her tiny arms about one of
his sturdy legs.
“I know him! I know him!” she shrieked. “My Miss Dorothy Dale has kep’
her _promise_. It’s Tom Moran. I knowed I’d know him. _Don’t you see
his red hair?_”
“And he kin take his red hair out o’ here,” declared Mrs. Hogan,
standing with arms akimbo and a very red face.
“It’s quick enough I shall be doin’ so,” said Tom Moran, sternly. “And
Cely shall come with me.”
“Not much!” ejaculated the woman. “I got her, bound hard and fast be
the orphan asylum folks----”
Tom seemed to swell until he was twice his usual size. His steely eyes
flashed as Dorothy’s had flashed.
“Let me tell ye something, me lady,” he almost croaked, and shaking
a finger in Mrs. Hogan’s face. “If ye had a stack av papers from
the foundling asylum, as high as yon tree, ye’d not kape me from
takin’ away me own sister--mind that now! And _you_ call yourself an
Irishwoman? Where’s yer hear-r-rt? Where’s yer pity for the little wan
of yer own race, left to the tinder care of strangers? Ah-h!”
Like Ned White, when he had tackled the Daggett woman and her crony,
Tom Moran heartily wished at that moment that Mrs. Ann Hogan were a man!
“I’m going to take me sister away from ye,” said Tom, after a minute’s
silence. “Stay me if ye dare!”
He picked the child up suddenly and hugged her fiercely to his broad
breast. Celia, with a happy cry, put both arms about his neck, and
looked up into his red face.
“I’se _so_ glad you comed for me like you did, Tom Moran. And you
_will_ keep me with you always?”
“Please God I will, Cely,” he said kissing her, hungrily.
The child laughed, and flung her head back so that she could see him
the better.
“Do you hear, dear Dorothy Dale?” she cried. “I am going with Tom
Moran. Why, maybe we’ll keep house together. _I_ can keep the
house--jes’ as clean! An’ I can cook, an’ scrub, an’ wash--’cause you
know, they say I’se jes’ the cutest little thing!”