“Goodness to gracious—and all hands around!”

“This is the muckiest, murkiest, most miserable, muddy day that ever was invented.”

“Wish we could set it up somewhere and shoot at it with our popguns!”

“Hate to stay in the house, and it isn’t any fun to go out.”

“Can’t—can’t we play something?” urged Dorothy Dale, feebly, hearing her friends all blaming the weather for their own shortcomings. It was Saturday afternoon—the first real soft, spring day of the season. It was depressing.

“Ya-as,” yawned Cologne. “Let’s pla-a-ay—wow! That most dislocated my jaws, I declare!”

“Play ‘cumjicum’ or ‘all around the mulberry bush,’” sniffed Edna Black. “You do think we are still kids; don’t you, Doro?”

“I can’t help it,” returned Dorothy, smiling. “You act that way.”

150 “Oh! listen to her! Villainess!” gasped Tavia, threatening her chum from the broad window sill of Number Nineteen with both clenched fists.

“Well, it isn’t really fitten to go out, as Chloe, the colored maid, says,” remarked Nita. “And what we shall really do with all this long afternoon and evening——”

“Let’s have a sing,” suggested Molly, passing around the last of a box of chocolate fudge she had made.

“Miss Olaine will stop us. She’s got a headache and has retired to her den,” said Dorothy, shaking her head.

“I tell you!” gasped Tavia, quickly. “Let’s play a play—a real play. All dress up, and paint our faces—Ned shall be the hero, and we’ll dress her up like a boy. And I’ll be the adventuress—I really just love to play I’m wicked—for I never get a chance to be.”

“You’re wicked enough naturally. It would be more of a stunt for you to play the innocuous heroine—or the ‘on-gi-nu,’” drawled Rose-Mary Markin.

“Oh! what an awful slap on the wrist!” cried Molly Richards.

“Et tu, Brute?” growled Tavia, in despairing accents.

“Now, what’s the use?” again demanded Dorothy. “You know very well that Miss Olaine151 will stop any fun that we start in the house.”

“You admit her unfairness; do you, Miss?” cried Ned Ebony.

“She is perfectly outrageous of late!” gasped Dorothy.

“To you, too,” groaned Cologne. “And no reason for it. You never did her any harm.”

“Not that I know of,” admitted Dorothy, sadly.

Tavia kept very still. She had no part in this discussion, but she felt “mean all over.” She believed she could explain the sudden dislike Miss Olaine seemed to have taken to Dorothy Dale.

“If we hadn’t all promised to treat her just as nice as we could——” began Molly.

“And we’ll keep it up to the end of the term,” said Dorothy, decidedly.

“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Ned. “We’ll be ladylike, be it ever so painful.”

“It’s easy,” interposed Tavia, with a grin, “to be as polite as she is. Whatever is working on Olaine’s mind——”

“It must be something awful. Nothing less than murder,” declared Ned.

“And now it’s begun to rain again,” observed Cologne, gloomily.

“Just a mist,” quoth Dorothy.

“Well! we could have missed it without crying about it. Now we can’t go out at all,” said Tavia, inclined to be snappy.

152 She turned to the window again. While the others were gabbling inconsequently, she stared off across the campus, already turning green, to the break in the tree-line where a considerable stretch of road could be seen plainly.

“Oh! the poor little kid!” she suddenly said.

“What’s the matter now?” drawled Rose-Mary. “Is Sammy Bensell’s goat on the rampage?”

“Goat? Who said anything about goat? What d’ye mean, goat?” demanded Tavia, without turning from the window.

“You said kid——”

“And it is! A little girl! Just see here, Doro!” cried Tavia, more energetically. “She’s lost one of those big rubbers in the mud. There! there goes the other——”

Her chum ran to the window to look out and the others crowded up to peer over their shoulders. They all saw the little figure struggling along the muddy road toward the school gate. She had a hood on, and a bedrabbled-looking coat, and tried to carry a broken umbrella.

“The poor little thing!” murmured Cologne.

Dorothy suddenly uttered a cry, backed out of the group with energy, and dashed for the door.

“What is it?” gasped Ned Ebony, who had been almost overturned.

“Who is it?” added Tavia, herself bursting153 through the group on the trail of her roommate.

“It’s Celia—little Celia!” cried Dorothy, as she ran out of the room without hat, coat, or overshoes.

Tavia followed her. It was a race between them to the gateway of Glenwood. They got there just as the wind-blown and saturated figure of Mrs. Ann Hogan’s little slave-of-all-work arrived at the open gateway.

“Oh, please!” shrilled the child’s sweet voice, “is this the big school where my Miss Dorothy—— Oh, my dear Dorothy Dale!” she concluded, and ran sobbing into Dorothy’s arms.

There was great confusion for the next few moments—not only at the gate, where Dorothy and Tavia took turns in hugging and quieting the sobbing child—but when they returned with Celia to the porch, where the other girls had gathered to satisfy their curiosity about the stranger.

“No,” said Dorothy, decidedly; “you must not all talk at once. It bothers her. Tavia and I are going to take her to our room—— No! you can’t all of you come. Go on about your business. By supper time Celia will be all right and you shall all get acquainted with her.”

She picked the little girl up in her arms—oh, how thin the little body was!—and carried her all the way to Number Nineteen. Tavia “tagged”154 closely, just as interested as she could be in the child.

“How did you get here, Celia?” demanded Dorothy, gravely, as she sat before the register, “skinning” off the little one’s damp stockings, after Tavia had removed the worn shoes.

“I rode-ed part of the way,” confessed Celia, nodding. “But Bentley didn’t know about it. I hide-ed in the back of the wagon.”

“My dear!” gasped Dorothy. “You ran away?”

“Bully!” murmured Tavia. “I love her for it.”

“Hush!” commanded Dorothy; but Celia did not hear what Tavia said.

“Yes, Dorothy Dale, I jes’ had to run away to see you. I jes’ knowed I could find you.”

“............