CHAPTER XXIIINAT JUMPS AT A CONCLUSION
All this time Tavia and Nat were having anything but a happy life. Nat would not have admitted it for the world, but he wished he could leave home and never appear at The Cedars again until Tavia had gone.
On her part, Tavia would have returned to Dalton before the new year had Dorothy allowed her to have her own way. Dorothy would not hear of such a thing.
To make the situation worse for the pair of young people so tragically enduring their first vital misunderstanding, Ned and Jennie Hapgood were sailing upon a sea of blissful and unruffled happiness. Nat and Tavia could not help noting this fact. The feeling of the exalted couple for each other was so evident that even the Dale boys discussed it—and naturally with deep disgust.
“Gee!” breathed Joe, scandalized. “Old Ned is so mushy over Jennie Hapgood that he goes around in a trance. He could tread on his own corns and not know it, his head is so far up in the clouds. Gee!”
“Iwouldn’t ever get so silly over a girl—not even our Dorothy,” Roger declared. “Would you, Joe?”
“Not in a hundred years,” was his brother’s earnest response.
The major admitted with a chuckle that Ned certainly was hard hit. The time set for Jennie Hapgood to return to Sunnyside Farm came and passed, and still many reasons were found for the prolongation of her visit. Ned went off to New York one day by himself and brought home at night something that made a prominent bulge in his lower right-hand vest pocket.
“Oh,oh, OH! Dorothy!” ejaculated Tavia, for the moment coming out of her own doldrums. “Do you know what it is? A Tiffany box! Nothing less!”
“Dear old Ned,” said her chum, with a smile.
Ned and Jennie disappeared together right after dinner. Then, an hour later, they appeared in the drawing-room where the family was assembled and Ned led Jennie forward by her left hand—the fingers prominently extended.
“White gold—platinum!” murmured Tavia, standing enthralled as she beheld the beautifully set stone.
“Set old Ned back five hundred bucks if it did a cent,” growled Nat, under his breath and keeping in the background.
“Oh, Jennie!” cried Dorothy, jumping up.
But Aunt Winnie seemed to be nearest. She reached the happy couple before anybody else.
“Ned needn’t tell me,” she said, with a little laugh and a little sob and putting both arms about Jennie. “Welcome, my daughter! Very welcome to the White family. I have for years tried to divide Dorothy with the major; now I am to have at leastonedaughter of my very own.”
Did she flash a glance at Tavia standing in the background? Tavia thought so. The proud and headstrong girl was shot to the quick with the arrow of the thought that Mrs. White had been told by Nat of the difference between himself and Tavia and that the lady would never come to Tavia and ask that question on behalf of her younger son that the girl so desired her to ask.
Never before had Tavia realized so keenly the great chasm between herself and Jennie Hapgood. Mrs. White welcomed Jennie so warmly, and was so glad, because Jennie was of the same level in society as the Whites. Both in blood and wealth Jennie was Ned’s equal.
Tavia knew very well that by explaining to Nat about Lance Petterby’s letters she could easily bring that young man to his knees. In her heart, in the very fiber of the girl’s being, indeed, had grown the desire to have Dorothy Dale’s Aunt Winnie tell her that she, too, would be welcome inthe White family. Now Tavia doubted if Aunt Winnie would ever do that.
Jennie was to go home to Sunnyside Farm the next day. This final decision had probably spurred Ned to action. Because of certain business matters in town which occupied both Ned and Nat at train time and the fact that Dorothy was busy with some domestic duty, it was Tavia who drove theFire Bird, the Whites’ old car, to the station with Jennie Hapgood.
A train from the West had come in a few minutes before the westbound one which Jennie was to take was due. Tavia, sitting in the car while Jennie ran to get her checks, saw a tall man carrying two heavy suitcases and wearing a broad-brimmed hat walking down the platform.
“Why! if that doesn’t look——Surely it can’t be—I—I believe I’ve got ’em again!” murmured Tavia Travers.
Then suddenly she shot out from behind the wheel, leaped to the platform, and ran straight for the tall figure.
“Garry Knapp!” she exploded.
“Why—why—Miss Travers!” responded the big young man, smiling suddenly and that “cute” little dimple just showing in his bronzed cheek. “You don’t mean to say you live in this man’s town?”
He looked about the station in a puzzled way,and, having dropped his bags to shake hands with her, rubbed the side of his head as though to awaken his understanding.
“I don’t understand your being here, Miss Travers,” he murmured.
“Why,I’mvisiting here,” she said, blithely. “Butyou——?”
“I—I’m here on business. Or I think I am,” he said soberly. “How’s your—Miss Dale!Shedoesn’t live here, does she?”
“Of course. Didn’t you know?” demanded Tavia, eyeing him curiously.
“No. Who—what’s this Major Dale to her, Miss Travers?” asked the young man and his heavy brows met for an instant over his nose.
“Her father, of course, Mr. Knapp. Didn’t you know Dorothy’s father was the only Major Dale thereis, and the nicest man there everwas?”
“How should I know?” demanded Garry Knapp, contemplating Tavia with continued seriousness. “What is he—a real estate man?”
“Why! didn’t you know?” Tavia asked, thinking quickly. “Didn’t I tell you that time that he was a close friend of Colonel Hardin, who owned that estate you told me joined your ranch there by Desert City?”
“Uh-huh,” grunted the young man. “Seems to me youdidtell me something about that. But I—I must have had my mind on something else.”
“Onsomebodyelse, you mean,” said Tavia, dimpling suddenly. “Well! Colonel Hardin left his place to Major Dale.”
“Oh! that’s why, then. He wants to buy my holdings because his land joins mine,” said Garry Knapp, reflectively.
Tavia had her suspicions of the truth well aroused; but all she replied was:
“I shouldn’t wonder, Mr. Knapp.”
“I got a good offer—leastways, better than those sharks, Stiffbold and Lightly, would make me after they’d seen the ranch—from some lawyers out there. They planked down a thousand for an option, and told me to come East and close the deal with this Major Dale. And it never entered into this stupid head of mine that he was related to—to Miss Dale.”
“Isn’t that funny?” giggled Tavia. Then, as Jennie appeared from the baggage room and the westbound train whistled for the station, she added: “Just wait for me until I see a friend off on this train, Mr. Knapp, and I’ll drive you out.”
“Drive me out where?” asked Garry Knapp.
“To see—er—MajorDale,” she returned, and ran away.
When the train had gone she found the Westerner standing between his two heavy bags about where she had left him.
“Those old suitcases look so natural,” she said,laughing at his serious face. “Throw them into the tonneau and sit beside me in front. I’ll show you some driving.”
“But look here! I can’t do this,” he objected.
“You cannot do what?” demanded Tavia.
“Areyoustaying with Miss Dale?”
“Of course I am staying with Doro. I don’t know but I am more at home at The Cedars than I am at the Travers domicile in Dalton.”
“But wait!” he begged. “There must be a hotel here?”
“In North Birchland? Of course.”
“You’d better take me there, Miss Travers, if you’ll be so kind. I want to secure a room.”
“Nothing doing! You’ve got to come out to The Cedars with me,” Tavia declared. “Why, Do—I mean, of course, Major Dale would never forgive me if I failed to bring you, baggage and all. His friends do not stop at the North Birchland House I’d have you know.”
“But, honestly, Miss Travers, I don’t like it. I don’t understand it. And Major Dale isn’t my friend.”
“Oh,isn’the? You just wait and see!” cried Tavia. “I didn’t know about your coming East. Of course, if it is business——”
“That is it, exactly,” the young man said, nervously. “I—I couldn’t impose upon these people, you know.”
“Say! you want to sell your land, don’t you?” demanded Tavia.
“Ye—es,” admitted Garry Knapp, slowly.
“Well, if a man came out your way to settle a business matter, you wouldn’t let him go to a hotel, would you? You’d be angry,” said Tavia, sensibly, “if he insisted upon doing such a thing. Major Dale could not have been informed when you would arrive, or he would have had somebody here at the station to meet you.”
“No. I didn’t tell the lawyers when I’d start,” said Garry.
“Don’t make a bad matter worse then,” laughed Tavia, her eyes twinkling as she climbed in and sat back of the wheel. “Hurry up. If you want to sell your land you’d better waste no more time getting out to The Cedars.”
The Westerner got into the car in evident doubt. He suspected that he had been called East for something besides closing a real estate transaction. Tavia suspected so, too; and she was vastly amused.
She drove slowly, for Garry began asking her for full particulars about Dorothy and the family. Tavia actually did not know anything about the proposed purchase of the Knapp ranch by her chum’s father. Dorothy had said not a word to her about Garry since their final talk some weeks before.
At a place in the woods where there was not a house in sight, Tavia even stopped the car the better to give her full attention to Mr. Garry Knapp, and to talk him out of certain objections that seemed to trouble his mind.
It was just here that Nat White, on a sputtering motorcycle he sometimes rode, passed the couple in the automobile. He saw Tavia talking earnestly to a fine-looking, broad-shouldered young man wearing a hat of Western style. She had an eager hand upon his shoulder and the stranger was evidently much interested in what the girl said.
Nat did not even slow down. It is doubtful if Tavia noticed him at all. Nat went straight home, changed his clothes, flung a few things into a traveling bag, and announced to his mother that he was off for Boston to pay some long-promised visits to friends there and in Cambridge.
Nat, with his usual impulsiveness, had jumped at a conclusion which, like most snap judgments, was quite incorrect. He rode to the railroad station by another way and so did not meet Tavia and Garry Knapp as they approached The Cedars.