CHAPTER XVITHE FLY IN THE AMBER

CHAPTER XVITHE FLY IN THE AMBER

“Oh, Dorothy!” cried Tavia.

Jennie, with a shudder, buried her face in her hands.

Joe and Roger Dale were fairly flying down the hill, and would endeavor to stop by collision with the same lump of frozen earth that had previously been their bulwark.

“See! Ned! Nat!” cried Dorothy again. “We must stop them!”

But how stop the boys already rushing down hill on their coaster? It seemed an impossible feat.

The White brothers dropped the towline of the big sled and scrambled along the slippery slope toward the edge of the gully.

With a whoop of delight the two smaller boys, on their red coaster, whisked past the girls.

“Stop them!” shrieked the three in chorus.

Ned reached the edge of the gully bank first. His weight upon the cracking earth sent the slight barrier crashing over the brink. Just as they had supposed there was not a possible chance of Joe’sstopping the sled when it came down to this perilous spot.

Tavia groaned and wrung her hands. Jennie burst out crying. Dorothy knew she could not help, yet she staggered after Ned and Nat, unable to remain inactive like the other girls.

Ned recovered himself from the slippery edge of the bank; but by a hair’s breadth only was he saved from being thrown to the bottom of the gully. He crossed the slide in a bound and whirled swiftly, gesturing to his brother to stay back. Nat understood and stopped abruptly.

“You grab Roger—I’ll take Joe!” panted Ned.

Just then the smaller boys on the sled rushed down upon them. Fortunately, the steeper part of the hill ended some rods back from the gully’s edge. But the momentum the coaster had gained brought it and its burden of surprised and yelling boys at a very swift pace, indeed, down to the point where Ned and Nat stood bracing themselves upon the icy ground.

“Oh, boys!” shrieked Tavia, without understanding what Ned and Nat hoped to accomplish. “Do something!”

And the very next instant they did!

The coaster came shooting down to the verge of the gully bank. Joe Dale saw that the bank had given way and he could not stop the sled. Nor did he dare try to swerve it to one side.

Ned and Nat, staring at the imperilled coasters, saw the look of fear come into Joe’s face. Ned shouted:

“Let go all holds! We’ll grab you! Quick!”

Joe was a quick-minded boy after all. He was holding the steering lines. Roger was clinging to his shoulders. If Joe dropped the lines, both boys would be free of the sled.

That is what he did. Ned swooped and grabbed Joe. Nat seized upon the shrieking and surprised Roger. The sled darted out from beneath the two boys and shot over the verge of the bank, landing below in the gully with a crash among the icy branches of a tree.

“Wha—what did you do that for?” Roger demanded of Nat, as the latter set him firmly on his feet.

“Just for instance, kid,” growled Nat. “We ought to have let you both go.”

“And I guess we would if it hadn’t been for Dorothy,” added Ned, rising from where he had fallen with Joe on top of him.

“Cracky!” gasped Joe. “We’d have gone straight over that bank that time, wouldn’t we? Gee, Roger! we’d have broken our necks!”

Even Roger was impressed by this stated fact. “Oh, Dorothy!” he cried, “isn’t it lucky you happened along, so’s to tell Ned and Nat what to do? I wouldn’t care to have a broken neck.”

“You are very right, kid,” growled Nat. “It’s Dorothy ‘as does it’—always. She is the observant little lady who puts us wise to every danger. ‘Who ran to catch me when I fell?’ My cousin!”

“Hold your horses, son,” advised his brother, with seriousness. “It was Dorothy who smelled out the danger all right.”

“I do delight in the metaphors you boys use,” broke in Dorothy. “I might be a beagle-hound, according to Ned. ‘Smelled out,’ indeed!”

“Aren’t you horrid?” sighed Jennie, for they were all toiling up the hill again.

Ned put the cup of his hand under Jennie’s elbow and helped her over a particularly glary spot. “Boys are very good folk,” he said, smiling down into her pretty face, “if you take them just right. But they are explosive, of course.”

Nat, likewise helping to drag the big sled, was walking beside Tavia. Dorothy looked from one couple to the other, smiled, and then found that her eyes were misty.

“Why!” she gasped under her breath, “I believe I am getting to be a sour old maid. I am jealous!”

She turned her attention to the smaller boys and they all went gaily up the hill. Nobody was going to discover that Dorothy Dale felt blue—not if she could possibly help it!

Over on the other side of the hill where thesmooth road lay the party had a wonderfully invigorating coasting time. They all piled upon the double-ripper—Joe and Roger, too—and after the first two or three slides, the runners became freed of rust and the heavy sled fairly flew.

“Oh! this is great—great!” cried Tavia. “It’s just like flying. I always did want to fly up into the blue empyrean——”

They were then resting at the top of the hill. Nat turned over on his back upon the sled, struggled with all four limbs, and uttered a soul-searching: “Woof! woof! Ow-row-row! Woof!”

“Get up, silly!” ordered Tavia. “Whenever I have any flight of fancyyoualways make it fall flat.”

“And if you tried a literal flight into the empyrean—ugh!—you’d fall flat without any help,” declared Nat. “But we don’t want you to fly away from us, Tavia. We couldn’t get along without you.”

“‘Thank you, kindly, sir, she said,’” responded his gay little friend.

However, Tavia and Nat could be serious on occasion. This very day as the party tramped home to luncheon, dragging the sleds, having recovered the one from the gully, they walked apart, and Dorothy noted they were preoccupied. But then, so were Ned and Jennie. Dorothy’s eyes danced now. She had recovered her poise.

“It’s great fun,” she whispered to her aunt, when they were back in the house. “Watching people who are pairing off, I mean. I know ‘which is which’ all right now. And I guess you do, too, Aunt Winnie?”

Mrs. White nodded and smiled. There was nothing to fear regarding this intimacy between her big sons and Dorothy’s pretty friends. Indeed, she could wish for no better thing to happen than that Ned and Nat should become interested in Tavia and Jennie.

“But you, my dear?” she asked Dorothy, slyly. “Hadn’t we better be finding somebody for you to walk and talk with?”

“I must play chaperon,” declared Dorothy, gaily. “No, no! I am going to be an old maid, I tell you, Auntie dear.” And to herself she added: “But never a sour, disagreeable, jealous one! Neverthat!”

Not that in secret Dorothy did not have many heavy thoughts when she remembered Garry Knapp or anything connected with him.

“We must send those poor girls some Christmas remembrances,” Dorothy said to Tavia, and Tavia understood whom she meant without having it explained to her.

“Of course we will,” she cried. “You would not let me give Forty-seven and her sister as much money as I wanted to for finding my bag.”

“No. I don’t think it does any good to put a premium on honesty,” Dorothy said gravely.

“Huh! that’s just what Garry Knapp said,” said Tavia, reflectively.

“But now,” Dorothy hastened to add, “we can send them both at Christmas time something really worth while.”

“Something warm to wear,” said Tavia, more than ordinarily thoughtful. “They have to go through the cold streets to work in all weathers.”

It seemed odd, but Dorothy noticed that her chum remained rather serious all that day. In the evening Nat came in with the mail bag and dumped its contents on the hall table. This was just before dinner and usually the cry of “Mail!” up the stairway brought most of the family into the big entrance hall.

Down tripped Tavia with the other girls; Ned lounged in from the library; Joe and Roger appeared, although they seldom had any letters, only funny postal cards from their old-time chums at Dalton and from local school friends.

Mrs. White took her mail off to her own room. She walked without her crutch now, but favored the lame ankle. Joe seized upon his father’s mail and ran to find him.

Nat sorted the letters out swiftly. Everybody had a few. Suddenly he hesitated as he picked up a rather coarse envelope on which Tavia’sname was scrawled. In the upper left-hand corner was written: “L. Petterby.”

“Great Peter!” he gasped, shooting a questioning glance at Tavia. “Does that cowpuncher write to you still?”

Perhaps there was something like an accusation in Nat’s tone. At least, it was not just the tone to take with such a high-spirited person as Tavia. Her head came up and her eyes flashed. She reached for the letter.

“Isn’t that nice!” she cried. “Another from dear old Lance. He’ssucha desperately determined chap.”

At first the other young folk had not noted Nat’s tone or Tavia’s look. But the young man’s next query all understood:

“Still at it, are you, Tavia? Can’t possibly keep from stringing ’em along? It’s meat and drink to you, isn’t it?”

“Why, of course,” drawled Tavia, two red spots in her cheeks.

She walked away, slitting Lance Petterby’s envelope as she went. Nat’s brow was clouded, and all through dinner he said very little. Tavia seemed livelier and more social than ever, but Dorothy apprehended “the fly in the amber.”

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