Dorothy Dale's Great Secret

Dorothy Dale's Great Secret
Margaret Penrose

Margaret Penrose

Dorothy Dale's Great Secret

CHAPTER I

AN AUTOMOBILE RIDE

“There is one thing perfectly delightful about boarding schools,” declared Tavia, “when the term closes we can go away, and leave it in another world. Now, at Dalton, we would have to see the old schoolhouse every time we went to Daly’s for a pound of butter, a loaf of bread – and oh, yes! I almost forgot! Mom said we could get some bologna. Whew! Don’t your mouth water, Dorothy? We always did get good bologna at Daly’s!”

“Bologna!” echoed Dorothy. “As if the young ladies of Glenwood School would disgrace their appetites with such vulgar fare!”

At this she snatched up an empty cracker box, almost devouring its parifine paper, in hopes of finding a few more crumbs, although Tavia had poured the last morsels of the wafers down her own throat the night before this conversation took place. Yes, Tavia had even made a funnel of the paper and “took” the powdered biscuits as doctors administer headache remedies.

“All the same,” went on Tavia, “I distinctly remember that you had a longing for the skin of my sausage, along with the end piece, which you always claimed for your own share.”

“Oh, please stop!” besought Dorothy, “or I shall have to purloin my hash from the table to-night and stuff it into – ”

“The armlet of your new, brown kid gloves,” finished Tavia. “They’re the very color of a nice, big, red-brown bologna, and I believe the inspiration is a direct message. ‘The Evolution of a Bologna Sausage,’ modern edition, bound in full kid. Mine for the other glove. Watch all the hash within sight to-night, and we’ll ask the girls to our clam-bake.”

“Dear old Dalton,” went on Dorothy with a sigh. “After all there is no place like home,” and she dropped her blond head on her arms, in the familiar pose Tavia described as “thinky.”

“But home was never like this,” declared the other, following up Dorothy’s sentiment with her usual interjection of slang. At the same moment she made a dart for a tiny bottle of Dorothy’s perfume, which was almost emptied down the front of Tavia’s blue dress, before the owner of the treasure had time to interfere.

“Oh, that’s mean!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Aunt Winnie sent me that by mail. It was a special kind – ”

“And you know my weakness for specials – real bargains! There!” and Tavia caught Dorothy up in her arms. “I’ll rub it all on your head. Tresses of sunshine, perfumed with incense!”

“Please stop!” begged Dorothy. “My hair is all fixed!”

“Well, it’s ‘fixest’ now. The superlative you know. I do hate your hair prim. Never knew a girl with heavenly hair who did not want to make a mattress of it. I have wonderfully enhanced the beauty of your coiffure, mam’selle, for which I ask to be permitted one kiss!” and at this the two girls became so entangled in each other’s embrace that it would have been hard to tell whom the blond head belonged to, or who might be the owner of the bronze ringlets.

But Dorothy Dale was the blond, and Octavia Travers, “sported” the dark tresses. “Sported” we say advisedly, for Tavia loved sport better than she cared for her dinner, while Dorothy, an entirely different type of girl, admired the things of this world that were good and beautiful, true and reliable; but at the same time she was no prude, and so enjoyed her friend’s sports, whenever the mischief involved no serious consequences.

That “Doro” as her chums called Dorothy, and Tavia could be so unlike, and yet be such friends, was a matter of surprise to all their acquaintances. But those who have read of the young ladies in the previous stories of the series, “Dorothy Dale; – A Girl of To-Day,” and “Dorothy Dale at Glenwood School,” have had sufficient introduction to these interesting characters to understand how natural it was for a lily (our friend Dorothy) to love and encourage a frolicsome wild flower (Tavia) to cling to the cultured stalk, to keep close to the saving influence of the lily’s heart – so close that no gardener would dare to tear away that wild flower from the lily’s clasp, without running the risk of cruelly injuring the more tender plant.

So it was with these two girls. No one could have destroyed their love and friendship for each other without so displacing their personalities as to make the matter one of serious consequences.

Many other girls had coveted Dorothy’s love; some had even tried to obtain it by false stories, or greatly exaggerated accounts of Tavia’s frolics. But Dorothy loved Tavia, and believed in her, so all attempts to destroy her faith were futile. And it was this faith, when the time came, that inspired Dorothy Dale to keep the Great Secret.

Glenwood School was situated amid the mountains of New England, and the two girls had completed one term there. On the afternoon when this story opens they were lounging in their own particular room, nineteen by number, waiting for the recreation bell to send its muffled chimes down the corridor.

They were waiting with unusual impatience, for the “hour of freedom” to come, for they expected visitors in an automobile.

“Like as not,” Tavia broke in suddenly, without offering a single excuse for the surprising interjection, “the Fire Bird will break down, and we won’t get our ride after all.”

“Cheerful speculation,” interposed Dorothy, “but not exactly probable. The Fire Bird is an auto that never breaks down.”

“What, never?” persisted Tavia, laughing.

“No, never,” declared Dorothy. “Of course all automobiles are subject to turns, but to really break down – Aunt Winnie would never allow her boys to run a machine not entirely reliable.”

“O-o-o-oh!” drawled Tavia, in mock surprise. Then the girls settled down to wait.

The Fire Bird, was a touring car in which the girls had enjoyed some noted rides about their home town of Dalton. Dorothy’s aunt, Mrs. Winthrop White, of North Birchland, owned the car, and her two sons, Edward and Nathaniel (or Ned and Nat, to give them the titles they always went by) good looking young fellows, were usually in charge of it when their favorite cousin Dorothy, and her friend Tavia, were the other passengers.

It may as well be stated at this time that Nat and Tavia were excellent friends, and even on a ride that had been termed notorious (on account of the strange experiences that befell the party while making a tour), Tavia and Nat had managed to have a good time, and made the best of their strange adventures.

It was not surprising then that on this afternoon, while Dorothy and Tavia waited for another ride in the Fire Bird, their brains should be busy with speculative thoughts. Tavia was sure Nat would think she had grown to be a real young lady, and Dorothy was so anxious to see both her cousins, that she fell to thinking they might have outgrown the jolly, big-boy relationship, and would come to her stiff and stylish young men.

The peal of the recreation bell in the outer hall suddenly aroused the girls, and, at the same moment the “honk-honk” of the Fire Bird’s horn announced the arrival of the long expected boys.

“There they are!” exclaimed Tavia, quite unnecessarily, for Dorothy was already making her pearl-tinted veil secure over her yellow head; and while Tavia was wasting her time, looking out of the window at the auto, which was surrounded by boys and girls who stood on the path, plainly admiring the two cousins and the stylish car, Dorothy was quite ready for the ride.

“Do come, Tavia!” she called. “The afternoon is short enough!”

“Com – ing!” shouted her irrepressible companion in high glee, making a lunge for her own veil, and tossing it over her head as she dashed down the corridor.

Dorothy stopped at the office on her way out to tell the principal, Mrs. Pangborn, that the expected visitors had arrived, and that she and Tavia were starting for the ride, permission to go having been granted in advance.

Outside, just beyond the arch in the broad driveway, the Fire Bird panted and puffed, as if anxious to take flight again. Ned was at the steering wheel and as for Nat, he was helping Tavia into the machine “with both hands” some jealous onlookers declared afterward. However Dorothy’s friend Rose-Mary Markin (known to her chums as Cologne because of her euphonious first names) insisted differently in the argument that followed the puffing away of the car.

It was no small wonder that the coming of the Fire Bird should excite such comment among the girls at Glenwood school. An automobile ride was no common happening there, for while many of the parents of the young ladies owned such machines, Glenwood was far away from home and so were the autos.

Edna Black, called Ned Ebony, and regarded as Tavia’s most intimate friend, insisted that Tavia looked like a little brown sparrow, as she flew off, with the streamers of her brown veil flying like wings. Molly Richards, nick-named Dick, and always “agin’ th’ government” like the foreigner in politics, declared that the girls “were not in it” with the boys, for, as she expressed it, “girls always do look like animated rag-bags in an automobile.”

“Boys just put themselves on the seat and stay put,” she announced, “but girls – they seem to float above the car, and they give me the shivers!”

“All the same,” interrupted Cologne, “the damsels manage to hang on.”

“And Dorothy was a picture,” ventured Nita Brant, the girl given to “excessive expletive ejaculations,” according to the records of the Nick Association, the official club of the Juniors.

So the Fire Bird, with its gay little party, flew over the hills of Glenwood. Dorothy was agreeably surprised to find her cousins just as good natured and just as boy-like as they had been when she had last seen them, and they, in turn, complimented her on her improved appearance.

“You look younger though you talk older,” Ned assured Dorothy, with a nice regard for the feminine feeling relative to age.

“And Tavia looks – looks – how?” stammered Nat, with a significant look at his elder brother.

“Search me!” replied the other evasively, determined not to be trapped by Nat into any “expert opinion.”

“Beyond words!” finished Nat, with a glance of unstinted admiration at his companion.

“Bad as that?” mocked Tavia. “The girls do call me ‘red head’ and ‘brick-top.’ Yes, even ‘carroty’ is thrown at me when I do anything to make Ned mad. You know that’s the girl,” she hurried to add, “the girl – Edna Black – Ned Ebony for short, you know. She’s the jolliest crowd – ”

“How many of her?” asked Ned, pretending to be ignorant of Tavia’s school vernacular.

“Legion,” was the enthusiastic answer, which elastic comment settled the question of Edna Black, for the time being, at least.