the
killingest things--But mercy, I must go. I have to go to the Green
before tea," and, with a reassuring kiss, Tavia darted off.

Dorothy looked after her friend as she skipped down the path, and a
sense of dread, of strange misgivings, took possession of her. What if
Tavia should actually run away as she had often threatened in jest!
Then Dorothy remembered how well Tavia danced, how she had practiced
the "stage fall" after seeing the play in Rochester, and how little
Johnnie Travers had barely escaped the falling ceiling that came down
with Tavia's attempt at tragedy. Then, too, Dorothy thought of the day
Tavia had painted her cheeks with mullin leaves and how Dorothy then
remarked in alarm: "Tavia, you look like an actress!"

How strangely bright Tavia's eyes seemed that day! How wonderfully
pretty her short bronze locks fell against her unnaturally red cheeks!
All this now flashed through Dorothy's dazed brain.

How could she leave Tavia? And yet she would so soon have to go
away--to that far-off school--

And that strange girl who had come with Alice. What could she have
meant by those horrid insinuations about Dorothy so "suddenly making up
her mind" to go to boarding school; and that it would be "too bad to
leave Tavia alone in Dalton just then!" as if everyone did not know by
this time just what had happened on the auto ride, and that Ned had
actually been offered the reward for the capture of Anderson. Not only
this but her two cousins, Ned and Nat, had received public praise for
brave conduct, and the two girls, whose names were not mentioned (Major
Dale had asked the reporter to omit them if possible from the report),
were also spoken of as having taken part in the capture, inasmuch as
they allowed Anderson to remain quietly in the car until the young
owners of the machine arrived upon the scene.

Dorothy sat there thinking it all over. It was almost dusk and on the
little vine-clad porch the shadows of the honey-suckle shifted idly
from Dorothy's chair to the block of sunshine that was trying so
bravely to keep the lonely girl company--every other ray of sunlight
had vanished, but that gleam seemed to stay with Dorothy. She did not
fail to observe this, as she always noticed every kindness shown her,
and she considered the "ray of light" as being very significant in the
present rather gloomy situation.

"But I must not mope," Dorothy told herself presently. "I simply must
talk the whole th