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Read Ebook: Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays by Penrose Margaret
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Ebook has 1703 lines and 48169 words, and 35 pages
"Who said that?" demanded Nat, promptly scrambling to his feet.
"However do you bear with them, Doro dear?" asked Mrs. White. "They seem to grow more unmanageable every day."
Then Dorothy, making herself heard above the argument, said:
"Boys, if we are going to meet Tavia--"
"Take plenty of robes," cautioned Mrs. White as the machine puffed and throbbed up to the front door. "It's getting colder, I think, and may snow at any moment."
"No such luck," grumbled Nat. "I never saw such fine, cold weather, and not a flake of snow. What's that about a 'green Christmas, and a fat graveyard'? Isn't there some proverb to that effect?"
"Oh, I surely think it will snow before Christmas," said Dorothy. "And we have plenty of robes, auntie, if the storm should come up suddenly."
"Come down, you mean," teased Ned, who seemed to be in just the proper mood for that sort of thing.
Dorothy laughed in retort. She enjoyed her cousins' good nature, and was never offended at their way of making fun at her expense.
Presently all was in readiness, and the Fire Bird swung out on the cedar-lined road and into the broad highway that led to the railroad station.
"I would just like to bet," remarked the persistent Ned as the station came into view at the end of the long road, "I would just like to bet almost anything that she will not come."
"Take you up!" answered Nat quickly. "I know she'll come."
"Oh, you feel her presence near," joked Ned. "Well, if she comes on time this trip there may be some hope for the poor wretch who may expect her to make good when he has fixed it up with the parson, the organist and--"
"Silly!" cried Dorothy gaily. "A man never pays the organist at--at an affair of that kind," and she blushed prettily.
"No?" questioned Ned in surprise. "Glad to hear it. Here, Nat, take this wheel while I make a note of it. A little thing like that is worth remembering," and he pretended to take out a notebook and jot it down.
When the train glided into the station, with a shrill screeching protest from the sparking wheels and brakes, and when quite a number of persons had alighted and gone their several ways, Dorothy and Nat, who had peered hopefully and anxiously at each passenger, looked rather ruefully at each other. Tavia had not come.
"Well?" asked Nat.
"Let's wait a little longer," suggested Dorothy.
Finally the train started up again, the private carriages and hired hacks had been driven off with scores of passengers and their baggage. Then, and not until she had looked up and down the deserted platforms, did Dorothy admit to Nat:
"She hasn't come!"
"Looks like it," replied the lad, plainly very much disappointed.
Ned, who could see what had happened, clapped his gloved hands in unholy glee.
"Didn't I tell you she'd duck?" he demanded triumphantly. "Didn't I tell you so?"
"Aw shut up!" growled Nat in pardonable anger.
"Ha! ha!" laughed his brother.
"Well, you're enough to hoodoo the whole thing," retorted Nat.
But Ned simply had to laugh--he couldn't help it, and when Dorothy and Nat took their places again in the machine Ned was chuckling and gasping in a manner that threatened to do serious damage to his entire vocal apparatus.
"It would have been a pity to have disappointed you in your fun," remarked Nat sarcastically after a particularly gleeful yelp from Ned. "What you would have missed had she come!"
"But I can't understand it," said Dorothy. "There is no other train until eight o'clock to-night."
"And that's a local that stops at every white-washed fence," added Nat.
"Oh, well, then she'll have plenty of time to think of the fine dinner she has missed," went on his brother. "Of all mean traits, I count that of being late the very meanest a nice girl can have."
"Oh, so then she is nice?" inquired Dorothy with a smile.
"Well, she can be--sometimes. But she was not to-day--eh, Nat?"
"For the land sake, say your prayers, or do--do something!" exclaimed his irritated brother.
"I might," retorted Ned, "but, being good is such a lonesome job, as some poet has remarked. Now, having fun is--"
"Look out there!" cautioned Nat suddenly. "You nearly ran over Mrs. Brocade's pet pup."
A tiny dog, of the much-admired, white-silk variety, was barking vigorously at the Fire Bird on account of the danger to which it had been subjected by the fat tires. And the dog's mistress, Mrs. Broadbent, nicknamed "Brocade" on account of her weakness for old-time silks and satins, was saying things about the auto party in much the same sort of aggrieved tones that the favorite dog was using.
"Wait until she meets you at the post-office," Nat reminded Ned. "Maybe she won't rustle her silks and satins at you."
But Ned only laughed, and kept on laughing as his mother appeared in the vestibule with a puzzled look at the empty seat in the tonneau of the Fire Bird.
Dorothy was the first to reach the porch.
"She didn't come," was her wholly unnecessary remark as Mrs. White opened the outer door.
"Isn't that strange!" replied the aunt. "Do you suppose anything could have happened?"
"I don't know. I hope not. She promised so definitely that I can't understand it," went on Dorothy.
Nat remained in the car as Ned drove it to the garage.
"I'm so sorry, after all the extra trouble to get up a good dinner," apologized Dorothy as she laid aside her wraps.
"Oh, well, we can all enjoy that," replied Mrs. White, "although, of course, we had counted on Tavia's presence. She is so jolly that the boys will be much disappointed."
"I'm just ashamed of her," went on Dorothy in a burst of indignation. "She should have learned by this time to keep her word, or else send some message."
"Yes, I am afraid Tavia does not care for the conventionalities of polite society," remarked Mrs. White. "In fact, I almost suspect she enjoys disregarding them. But never mind! we must not condemn her unheard."
WHAT HAPPENED TO TAVIA
It must not be understood that Nat was a very silly boy. Not at all. He did like Tavia, but he liked his own sweet cousin Dorothy, and would have been just as disappointed, if not more so, had it been Dorothy who had missed her train and not Tavia.
But the fact that all seemed to need Tavia to finish up the holiday plans, and that now she had not come put Nat in a very restless mood, and when the dinner, which was served immediately upon the return from the depot, was over, Nat decided he would find something to do that would occupy his time until the eight o'clock train, when, of course, they would again go to the station.
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