DOROTHY’S WITS AT WORK

“The Night of the White Giant,” whispered Ned Ebony, shrilly, as she put her head in at the door of the chums’ room at Glenwood.

“Boo! how you scared me!” exclaimed Tavia, preparing to throw her Latin grammar—it was a book she would willingly have spared altogether—at Ned’s devoted head.

“Hist!”

Nita Brent looked over the stooping Edna. Above her head at the narrow opening appeared the rather puffy-looking face of Cologne. It was evident that the “heavy lady” had been asleep, but now she yawned and said:

“Hist twice! Come on, girls!”

“Don’t shoot, Tavia. Like Davy Crockett’s coon, we’ll come down,” said Ned, dodging the threatening book.

“You’ll have Olaine—or some other teacher—upon our trail,” gasped Nita.

“What’s up?” demanded Dorothy, shutting her book and leaving a hairpin for a bookmark.

133 “We are. So must you be. And they will have to!” declared Ned. “We’re for getting the whole bunch. It’s the Night of the White Giant, I tell you.”

“Oh, goody, goody-gander!” exclaimed Tavia, clapping her hands—but softly. “I had forgotten. We haven’t had one this winter.”

“It’s kid tricks, girls,” complained Dorothy.

“List to her! Wow!” gasped Tavia, and landed a soft sofa pillow right in the back of Dorothy’s neck. “Don’t you dare suggest we’re growing old.”

“‘Silver threads among the gold’,” quoted Cologne. “I know. She’s getting rheumatic, too. Second childhood is close upon her——”

“Stop ranting and come on!” commanded Ned Ebony. “High overshoes—mittens—everything! the snow is just soft enough. If we’re careful we’ll make Olaine’s eyes bulge out in the morning. She never saw an old-fashioned Glenwood ‘white giant.’”

“‘The little dimpled darling has never seen Christmas yet,’” quoted Tavia in a high, mincing tone. “Where’s my rub-a-dub-dubs, Dorothy Dale? Did you eat ’em, I want to know?”

But when the chums were dressed, and the other girls of the upper class filed into the corridor, dressed for the frolic, there was little noise. This134 was an escapade that was not indulged in every winter by the Glenwood girls, for not often was the snow in the state it was at present.

There was plenty of it; it was soft and “packy,” and there was starlight enough to aid them in their work, although there was no moon.

The pedestal of the statue they proposed erecting was made of several huge balls rolled on the campus and then set upright in a circle, in the middle of the lawn, facing the teachers’ windows.

Other smaller balls were rolled swiftly and, as they had to be brought from a greater distance as the figure progressed, they were rolled upon sleds and dragged to the scene of operations. With pieces of board and a couple of shovels Tavia, Dorothy and Cologne shaped the round body of the giant as it grew in bulk and height.

“We’ll make the biggest and the tallest giant Glenwood ever saw,” declared Tavia. “Come on with that ball, Neddie. Hoist it up here!”

When one of the snowballs, raised in the arms of four girls to be adjusted upon the figure, chanced to burst like a bomb, there was much smothered hilarity—from those who were not engulfed in the mishap.

“Oh! oh! oh!” cried Nita. “I feel as if I’d been caught in an avalanche in the Alps! Goodness me! how wet that snow is!”

135 “All the dry snow’s ‘give out’, Nita. We’ve got to use the wet kind,” giggled Tavia.

“If you had two quarts of snow down your back——” began Ned Ebony, in disgust.

“Come on! come on!” urged Cologne. “You’re wasting time. Who knows but Olaine will be out here any minute?”

“Oh, I hope not!” cried one of the other girls. “I am trying my very best to treat her nicely; and I am sorry for her. But she is the most cantankerous thing! So there!”

“Come on! come on!” Tavia kept urging. “Hand ’em up here—— My goodness gracious, Agnes! I almost went down that time. If I only had a nice young man up here to help me hold on this slippery eminence——”

“Where would you ever get a young man—nice or otherwise—at Glenwood?” demanded Ned Ebony.

“Don’t know. Advertise for one, I guess,” grunted the struggling Tavia. “‘Lost, Strayed, or Stolen—One young man—preferably blue eyed.’ Going to put that in the ‘Agony Column’ of the New York Screecher——”

“Oh, Tavia!” gasped Dorothy, standing up straight on the giant’s “waist line” and staring up at her friend.

“What’s up now? Mercy!” ejaculated Tavia,136 making a grab for her. “You’ll be down next, if you don’t look out. What’s the matter?”

“You—you gave me an idea,” said Dorothy, slowly.

“Hope I never give you another,” declared Tavia. “Look out, now! here comes that part of the giant called—colloquially—his ‘dining room’. It must be adjusted properly. Let’s have a real shapely giant—do.”

“He’ll look as though he had swallowed Jack the Giant Killer, all right,” panted Ned Ebony.

“Not much! Give me that shovel,” cried Tavia. “I am going to slice off some of his aldermanic prop............