CHAPTER XXA GIRL OF TO-DAY
“It was the prettiest wedding I ever saw,” Dorothy Dale declared, as the party, bound for North Birchland again, climbed aboard the midnight train at the station nearest Sunnyside Farm.
“And the bride was too sweet for anything,” added Jennie Hapgood, who was returning to The Cedars as agreed, to remain until after New Year’s.
“Jack looked quite as they always do,” said Ned in a hollow voice.
“As who always do?” demanded Tavia.
“The brooms.”
“‘Brooms’!” cried Dorothy. “Grooms, Ned?”
“He’s a ‘new broom’ all right,” chuckled Edward White. “Poor chap! he doesn’t know what it means to love, honor, obey, and buy frocks and hats for a girl of to-day.”
“Pah!” retorted his brother, “you’d like to be in his shoes, Nedward.”
“Me? I—guess—not!” declared Edward. “I have my own shoes to stand in, thank you,”and Ned looked at Jennie Hapgood with a meaning air.
So the party came back to The Cedars in much the same state as it had gone to the wedding. Ned and Jennie were so much taken up with each other that they were frankly oblivious to the mutual attitude of Nat and Tavia. Dorothy Dale was kept busy warding off happenings that might attract the particular attention of Major Dale and Aunt Winnie to the real situation between the two.
Besides, Dorothy had “troubles of her own,” as the saying goes. She felt that she must decide, and neglect the decision no longer, a very, very important matter that concerned herself more than it did anybody else in the world—a matter that she was selfishly interested in.
Ample time had passed now for Dorothy Dale to consider from all standpoints this really wonderful thing that had come into her life and had so changed her outlook. On the surface she might seem the same Dorothy Dale to her friends and relatives; but secretly the whole world was different to her since that shopping trip she and Tavia had taken to New York wherein she and her chum had met Garry Knapp.
A thousand times Dorothy had called up the details of every incident of the adventure—this greatest of all adventures Dorothy Dale had ever entered upon.
She felt that she should never meet again a man like Garry Knapp. None of the boys she had known before had ever made much of an impression on Dorothy Dale’s well-balanced mind. But from the beginning she had looked upon the young Westerner with a new vision. His reflection filled the mirror of her thought as splendidly as at first. The dimple that showed faintly in one bronzed cheek, his rather large but well-formed features, his mop of black hair, his broad shoulders and well-set-up body—all these personal attributes belonging to Garry Knapp were as clearly fixed in Dorothy’s mind now as at first.
So, too, her memory of all that had happened was clear. Garry’s proffered help in the department store when Tavia was in trouble first aroused Dorothy to an appreciation of his unstudied kindness. It was the most natural thing in the world for him to offer aid when he saw anybody in trouble.
Dorothy blushed now whenever she thought of her doubts of Garry Knapp when she had seen him so easily fall into conversation with the department store salesgirl on the street. Why! that was exactly what he would do—especially if the girl asked him for help. She still blushed at the remembrance of the jealous feeling that had prompted her avoidance of the young man until his action was explained. Her pique had shortenedher acquaintanceship with Garry Knapp. She might have known him far better had it not been for that incident of the shopgirl.
“And my own suspicion was the cause of it. I refused to meet Garry Knapp as Tavia did. Why! she knows him better than I do,” Dorothy Dale told herself.
It was after her discovery of why Tavia had been writing to Lance Petterby and receiving answers from that “happy tho’ married cowboy person,” to quote Tavia, that Dorothy so searched her own heart regarding Garry Knapp.
“You are a dear, loyal friend, Tavia,” she told her chum. “But—butwhyare you trying so to get in touch with Mr. Knapp?”
“Really want me to tell you?” demanded Tavia.
“Yes.”
“Truly-rooly—black-and-bluely?”
“Of course, dear.”
“Because I have been a regular ivory-kopf!” cried Tavia. “Forgive my hybrid German. Oh, Dorothy! I didn’t want to tell you, for I hoped Lance might quickly find your Garry Knapp.”
“MyGarry Knapp,” said Dorothy, blushing.
“Yes, my dear. Don’t dodge the fact. We all seem to be suddenly grown up. We are shucking our shells of maidenhood like crabs——”
“Tavia! Horrors! Don’t!” begged Dorothy.
“Don’t like my metaphor, dear?” chuckledTavia. But she was grim again in a moment, continuing: “No use dodging the fact, I repeat. You were interested in that man from the beginning. Now, weren’t you?”
“Ye—es, Tavia,” admitted her friend.
“And I should have seen that you were. I ought to have known, when you were put out with him because of that shopgirl, that for that very reason you were more interested in Garry Knapp than in any other fellow who ever shined up to you——”
“Tavia! How can you?”
“Huh! Just as e-asy,” responded her friend, with a wicked twinkle in her eye and mimicking Garry Knapp’s manner of speaking. “Now, listen!” she hurried on. “That night I took dinner with him alone—the evening you had the—er—headache and went to bed. ’Member?”
“Oh, yes,” sighed Dorothy, nodding.
“He just pumped me about you,” said Tavia. “And I was just foolish enough to tell him all about your money—how rich your folks were and all that.”
“Oh!” and Dorothy flushed again.
“You don’t get it—not yet,” said Tavia, wagging her head. “Afterwards I remembered how funny he looked when I had told him that you were a regular ‘sure-enough’ heiress, and I remembered some things he said, too.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dorothy, faintly.
“Why, I scared him away from you,” blurted out Tavia, almost in tears when she thought of what she called her “ivory-headedness.” “I know that he was just as deeply smitten with you, dear, as—as—well, as ever a man could be! But he’s poor—and he’s game. I think that is why he went off in such a hurry and without tryingveryhard to see you again.”
“Oh, Tavia! Do you believe that is so?” and the joy in Dorothy’s voice could not be mistaken.
“Well!” exclaimed Tavia, “isn’t that pretty bad? You act as though you were pleased.”
Dorothy blushed again, but she was brave. She gazed straight into Tavia’s eyes as she said:
“I am pleased, dear. I am pleased to learn that possibly it was not his lack of interest in poor little me that sent him away from New York so hastily—at least, without making a more desperate effort to see me.”
“Oh, Doro!” cried Tavia, suddenly putting both arms around her friend. “Do you actually mean it?”
“Mean what?”
“That you l-l-likehim so much?”
Dorothy laughed aloud, but nodded emphatically. “I l-l-likehim just as much as that,” she mocked. “And if it’s only my father’s money in the way——”
“And your own. You really will be rich when you are twenty-one,” Tavia reminded her. “I tell you, that young man was troubled a heap when he learned from me that you were so well off. If you had been a poor girl—if you had beenme, for instance—he would never have left New York City without knowing his fate. I could see it in his eyes.”
“Oh, Tavia!” gasped Dorothy, with clasped hands and shining eyes.
“My dear,” said her friend, with serious mouth but dancing orbs. “I never would have thought it possible—ofyou. ‘Love like a lightning bolt’—just like that. And the cautious Dorothy!” Then she went on: “But, Dorothy, how will you ever find him?”
“You have done your best, Tavia,” her friend said, nodding. “I suppose I might have tried Lance Petterby, too. But now I shall put Aunt Winnie’s lawyers to work out there. If possible, Mr. Knapp must be found before those real estate sharks buy his land. But if the transaction is completed, we shall have to reach him in some other way.”
“Dorothy! You sound woefully strong-minded. Do you mean to go right after the young man—just as though it were leap year?” and Tavia giggled.
“I hope,” said Dorothy Dale, girl of to-day thatshe was, “I have too much good sense to lose the chance of showing the man I love that he can win me, because of any foolish or old-fashioned ideas of conventionalities. If Garry Knapp thinks as much of me as I do of him, his lack of an equal fortune sha’n’t stand in the way, either.”
“Oh, Doro! it sounds awful—but bully!” Tavia declared, her eyes round. “Do you mean it?”
“Yes,” said Dorothy, courageously.
“But suppose he is one of those stubborn beings you read about—one of the men who will not marry a girl with money unless he has a ‘working capital’ himself?”
“That shall not stand in our way.”
“What do you mean?” gasped Tavia. “Not that you would give up your money for him?”
“If I find I love him enough—yes,” said Dorothy, softly.