After a moment of silence—a tense moment—the footsteps passed on again. The two chums looked at each other.

“Who could it have been?” whispered Dorothy.

“Give it up,” replied Tavia, recklessly. “None of our friends, or they would have come in.”

Softly she opened the door and peered out.

“Whoever it was, they’re out of sight, and I don’t mean that for slang, either,” she announced. “But say, Doro, dear, I don’t see why I can’t find that picture. It’s disappeared most mysteriously. I don’t like it.”

“But you will find it. Perhaps it blew out of the window,” Dorothy suggested.

“Maybe,” Tavia replied, “but I have lost something else.”

“What?”

“A slip of paper I took out of the candy box. It had an address on it, and I wanted it.”

76 “But it was not yours, if you took it from Jean’s box.”

“That’s the very reason I wanted it. Well, never mind. Wash up and we’ll go out in the woods. Maybe we’ll dig up some more lunch carts.”

“I don’t believe I care to,” Dorothy answered. “I want to wait for the mail. Besides, my eyes would betray me,” and she glanced in the mirror to confirm her suspicion.

“All right. I’ll go out, hunt up the news, and fetch it back to you. In the meantime you might be hunting up your photo for me. I feel lonely without it,” and Tavia, without making any other preparation than picking up a parasol, was gone.

Dorothy did not sit down and cry, although she felt gloomy indeed, but, as her trunk had arrived, she buried her “blues” in the work of getting things in order.

Tavia met her “cronies” in the cedar clump. They were planning for the “rumpus,” and as the two factions were rivals, each would, of course, try to “perpetrate” the greatest surprise.

Cologne and Ned asked about Dorothy, but Tavia managed to reply without really answering.

“The rumpus this year must be classic,” declared Molly Richards. “We are growing up, and Mrs. Pangborn won’t allow any tom-boying.”

77 “Then count me out,” announced Tavia, “for I couldn’t have a smitch of fun classicing.”

“You don’t know how much fun it is to try to look in a pool like Psyche, and have a real frog jump out at you. However, if you have no suggestions to make there is no use in telling all ours,” and Molly, or Dick, as they called her, put up her note book.

“I suggest refreshments,” Tavia volunteered, “but I will have to calendar my fee. I am, as usual, penniless.”

“And we are to re-name our club,” said Edna. “What do you think of the Tarts—meaning tarters, of course.”

“I’ll just wager that’s what the ‘T’s’ stand for! Fancy us hitting the same name. Wouldn’t it be a............