The train started a second after the two almost breathless girls entered the half-empty chair car. They came in with a rush, and barely found their seats and got settled in them before the easily rolling train had pulled clear of the station and the yards.

“Back to dear old Glenwood School, Doro!” cried Tavia Travers, fairly hugging her more sober companion. “How do you feel about it?”

“De-lighted, Miss,” laughed Dorothy Dale. “After our trying experiences in New York——Well! a country life is strenuous enough for me, I guess.”

“But we did have some fun, Doro. And how we got the best of that hateful Akerson man! I just hate that fellow. I could beat him!”

“Your feeling is not scriptural,” groaned Dorothy,2 though her eyes twinkled. “Don’t you know, if you are struck on one cheek you should turn the other also?”

“But suppose you’re hit on the nose?” demanded Tavia. “One hasn’t two noses!”

“Well, Aunt Winnie is well rid of that Akerson,” said Dorothy, with a little sigh of satisfaction.

“And your cousins, Ned and Nat, have you to thank for the salvation of their income,” returned Tavia.

“Us, you mean,” laughed Dorothy. “You had more to do with the showing up of that real estate agent than I had, Tavia.”

“Nonsense—— Oh, here’s the station where the girls may join us. Do let me open that window, Doro! I don’t care if it is cold outside. I want to see if they are on the platform.”

Tavia was already struggling with the window. But windows in cars are made to stick, it would seem. Tavia cast a pleading glance from her big eyes at the trim young brakeman just then coming through the car.

“Please!” Tavia’s eyes said just as plainly as though she had spoken the word; but the young brakeman shook his head gravely.

“Do you really want it open, Miss?” he asked, hesitating at the chairs occupied by the two friends.

3 “I want to see out—just a little bit,” said Tavia, pouting.

“But if anybody objects——” the young brakeman continued, taking hold of the fixtures of the sash with his gloved hands.

“Isn’t he just a dear?” murmured Tavia to Dorothy, but loud enough for the young railroad man to hear.

“Do hush, Tavia!” gasped her friend.

The young man opened the window. The exertion seemed to have been considerable, for he grew red to the very tips of his ears while he was raising the sash!

“Oh, thank you—so much!” gushed Tavia, perfectly cool. And when the brakeman had gone, she turned to Dorothy, and demanded:

“Didn’t I say that prettily? Just like a New York society girl would say it—the one who took us to tea that time in the tea room that used to be a millionaire’s stable; do you remember?”

“You are just dreadful, Tavia!” groaned Dorothy Dale. “Will you never learn to behave?”

“There they are!” shrieked Tavia, with her head out of the window. “There are all the ‘bad pennies’—they always turn up again, you know.”

The train was slowing down and the long platform of the junction came into view.

“Who’s there?” begged Dorothy, willing to4 learn the details from her more venturesome companion.

“Ned Ebony—yes, ma’am! And there’s Cologne. Oh, bully! everybody’s here. This way, girls!” cried Tavia as the car passed a group of merry-faced girls of about their own age. “I hope you’ve all got chairs in this car.”

And, by good fortune, they had! Within the next few moments nearly a dozen of the pupils of Glenwood School had joined the chums—and all of these newcomers, as well as Dorothy and Tavia, belonged to the class that would graduate from the famous old school the coming June.

“Tell us all about New York—do!” cried Ned Ebony, otherwise Edna Black.

“And Miss Mingle!” urged Rose-Mary, whom the other girls called “Cologne” most of the time. “Is she coming back to Glenwood School to teach music?”

“Poor little Mingle has had a hard time,” Dorothy said. “But she is coming back to us—and we must treat her nicely, girls.”

“Oh, we must!” added Tavia. “Better than I treated her feather-bed.”

The girls all laughed at that, for it had been Tavia’s last prank at Glenwood to shower little Miss Mingle with the feathers from her own special tick.

“But about New York,” urged one of the5 other girls who had never been to the metropolis. “We’re just dying to know something about it, Doro.”

“And if it is as wicked as they say it is,” cried another.

“And as nice,” urged Ned Ebony.

“And as horribly dirty as they say,” went on Cologne.

“And the subways—and elevated trains—and all the rest of it,” came the seemingly unending demands.

“Help! help! ‘Ath-thith-tanth, pleath!’” cried Tavia. “That’s the way one of the girls in a big store called the floorwalker—jutht like that!”

“Now, go ahead and tell us something wonderful,” begged Cologne.

“See here,” said Dorothy, laughing, and diving into her handbag. “Here’s something that I cut out of the paper. It is how New York struck the wondering eye of an Arab who visited it recently. He sent this letter to his brother at home:

    “‘People in America travel like rats under the ground, and like squirrels in the air, and the buildings are so high that people have to be put in square boxes and pulled to the top by heavy ropes. In the day the sun furnishes the light as in Morocco. At night the light is as strong as in the day, but people here do not seem to have much use for6 sleep, as the streets are just as crowded at night as in the day.’

“There!” laughed Dorothy. “That is New York—that, and operas, and theatres, and ‘tea-fights,’ and automobiles whizzing, and car gongs banging, and the rattle of steam riveters, and newsboys shrieking, and——”

“My turn! I’ll relieve you,” interposed Tavia. “There are lots of nice boys—real dressy boys—and it’s fun to go to the tea-rooms, for you see everybody—and they dance! And we’ve learned to dance the very newest dances——”

“Oh, Tavia!” gasped Dorothy. “Only with each other—you know that. We’ve just picked up some of the steps, seeing others do it—and practised in our room at Aunt Winnie’s.”

“There! She always spoils everything,” declared Tavia. “I was just making Ned Ebony’s eyes ‘bulge right out’ at our wickedness. I think——”

At that moment brakes were put on the train and the girls were suddenly tumbled together in quite a heap. There was something ahead to cause this sudden stoppage, and Tavia struggled with her window again. It went up easier this time. Perhaps that was because there was no good looking young man—in or out of uniform—near at hand.

7 “Oh! it’s a fire!” gasped Cologne, looking over Tavia’s shoulder when the latter got the window open.

“On the tracks!” declared Tavia.

Dorothy got a glimpse of the fire now.

“It’s the bridge over Caloom Creek,” she cried. “It’s all ablaze! I declare, girls, suppose we are held here all night!”

“Don’t mention such a thing!” groaned Ned Ebony. “It’s only twenty miles from here to Glenwood.”

“Right,” agreed Tavia; “and Belding is the next station beyond the creek.”

“Let’s go out and ask the railroad men if we can’t get over the river and get a train on to Glenwood at once,” suggested Dorothy Dale.

“Let’s!” agreed Tavia, with a giggle. “That nice young brakeman, Doro—I’ll ask him, if you are bashful.”

But it was the conductor in charge of the train they found when the hilarious party of school girls got out with their hand baggage.

“How are you going to get across the river, young ladies?” he wanted to know. “The highway bridge is a mile through the woods.”

“But we know all about this river,” spoke up Tavia. “There are stepping stones across it right below this old railroad bridge. We’ve been across them before—haven’t we, Doro?”

8 “In the summer,” her friend admitted.

“Well, you can try it,” said the conductor. “That bridge is going to be unstable, even if they get the fire out. A train may not cross from either side before to-morrow.”

“Oh!” cried Ned Ebony, “we could never wait that long!”

“Come on!” commanded Tavia, leading the way into a path beside the railroad tracks. “Let’s at least see if the stones are uncovered.”

“You’ll probably find transportation from Belding to the Glen,” said the conductor, as the girls started on.

“Come on, now,” said Tavia. “Let’s show our pluck. Who’s afraid of a little water?”

“I’m always seasick on the water,” murmured Cologne.

“Never heard of anybody being troubled by mal de mer going over stepping stones,” snorted Tavia, in disgust. “Come on!”

There was a fringe of bushes along both sides of the creek. This path beside the railroad tracks forked, and one branch of it led right down to the stepping stones. The water was rough; but there was no ice, and the top of each stone was bare and dry.

Years and years before the people living in the neighborhood had put these flat-top boulders into the creek-bed, because the light wooden bridges9 were forever being carried away by the floods. Of course that was before the day of the railroad.

Tavia started across the stones, and Dorothy followed her. One after the other they got over safely. But Ned Ebony’s shoe came untied and she was last.

Perhaps she was careless; perhaps she tripped on her shoelace; perhaps she was heedless enough to step on the edge of a certain small boulder that Tavia warned her was not exactly steady.

However it was, the boulder rolled, poor Edna “sprawled” in the air for a moment to get her balance, and then the rock turned over and she went “splash!” into the water.