“Dalton! Dalton! Hurrah!”

“Look out—do, Tavia! You’ll be out of the window next.”

“No, I won’t. That isn’t the very next thing I’m going to do.”

“What is ‘next,’ then?”

“Going to hug you!” declared Tavia, and proceeded to put her threat into execution, smashing Dorothy’s hat down over her eyes, and otherwise adding to the general “mussed-up condition” resulting from the long journey from Glenwood to the town which was still Tavia’s home, and for which Dorothy would always have a soft spot in her heart.

“Oh, dear me!” gasped Tavia. “It is so delightsome, Doro Doodlebug, to have you really going home with me to stay at my house for two whole weeks. It is too good to be true!” and out of the window her head went again, thrust forth far to see the station the train was approaching.171 Dorothy made another frantic grab at her skirt.

“Do be careful! You’ll knock your silly head off on a telegraph pole.”

“No loss, according to the opinion of all my friends,” sighed Tavia. “Do you know the latest definition of ‘a friend’? It’s a person who stands up for you behind your back and sits down on you hard when you are in his company.”

The brakes began to grind and Tavia put on her hat and grabbed her hand baggage.

“Dear old Dalton,” whispered Dorothy, looking through the window with a mist in her eyes. “What good times we had here when we were just—just children!”

“Dead oodles of fun!” quoth Tavia. “Come on, Doro. You’ll get carried past the station and have to walk back from the water-tank.”

But Dorothy was ready to leave in good season. And when the girls got off the train who should meet them but three smartly-dressed youngsters who proceeded to greet them with wild yells and an Indian war dance performed in public on the station platform.

“Oh, Johnny!” gasped Tavia, capturing her own young brother.

“And Joe and Roger!” cried Dorothy. “How did you boys get here ahead of us? Aren’t you the dears?”

“School closed two days earlier than usual,”172 explained Joe Dale, who was now almost as tall as Dorothy and a very manly-looking fellow.

“Don’t kiss me so much on the street, sister,” begged Roger, under his breath. “Folks will see.”

“And what if?” demanded Dorothy, laughing.

“They’ll think I’m a little boy yet,” said Roger. “And you know I’m not.

“No. You are no longer Dorothy’s baby,” sighed the girl. “She’s lost her two ‘childers’.”

“Never mind, Sis,” sympathized Joe. “You were awful good to us when we were small. We sha’n’t forget our ‘Little Mum’ right away; shall we, Rogue?”

“Is that what the other boys call him at school?” demanded Dorothy, with her arm still around the little fellow.

“Yep,” laughed Joe. “And he is a rogue. You ought to heard him in class the other day. Professor Brown was giving a nature lesson and he asked Rogue, ‘How does a bee sting?’ and Roger says, ‘Just awful!’ What do you think of that?”

“A graduate of the school of experience,” commented Tavia. “Come on, now, folks. Joe and Roger are staying at our house, too—for a while.”

She started off, arm in arm with her own brother, and Dorothy followed with Joe and Roger, the boys carrying all “the traps,” as Johnny called the baggage.

The present home of the Travers family was173 much different from that home as introduced to my readers in “Dorothy Dale: A Girl of To-day”; for although Mrs. Travers would never be a model housekeeper, the influence of Tavia was felt in the home even when she was away at school.

Mr. Travers, too, had succeeded in business and was not only an officer in the town, and of political importance, but he was interested in a construction company, and the family was prospering.

Mrs. Travers realized the help and stimulation Dorothy had given to Tavia, and she welcomed her daughter’s friend very warmly. Tavia “took hold” immediately and straightened up the house and seized the reins of government. Tavia was proud and she did not wish Dorothy to see just how “slack” her mother still was in many ways.

Her own dainty room she shared with Dorothy; and while the latter was going about, calling on old friends, during the first two days, Tavia worked like a Trojan to make the whole house spick and span.

“It’s worth a fortune to have you around the house again, Daughter,” declared Mr. Travers.

“All right, Squire,” she said, laughingly giving him his official title. “When I get through at Glenwood I reckon I’ll have to be your housekeeper altogether—eh?”

“And will you be content to come home and stay?” he asked her, pinching the lobe of her ear.

174 “Why not?” she demanded, cheerfully.

“But if Dorothy goes to college——?”

“I can’t have Dorothy always. I wish I could,” sighed Tavia. “But I know, as Grandma Potter says, ‘Every tub must stand on its own bottom.’ I have go............