“I’ll be there!” declared the boy, but only Dorothy knew why he spoke so earnestly.

CHAPTER VI

OFF FOR CAMP

“But Cologne won’t wait another day.  I have got to be off to camp,” Dorothy insisted.

“Isn’t our camp good enough?” asked Joe.  “We have not seen you for so long—­and now off you go again.”

“Yes, and I thought she was going to cook for us.  I guess I don’t want to camp with the fellows cooking,” murmured the disappointed Roger.

“I am sure I would love to stay at the Cedars longer,” their sister assured them.  “But you know I must keep my engagements, and I am to live in a real camp this summer.”

“And Tavia is going, too,” Roger went on.  “If she was around here there might be some fun.”

“Perhaps you both can come to Maine for a stay.  Then you would see the great big moose you hear so much about.  If they are not to be found alive I am sure we could manage to see some dead,” said Dorothy.  “Now be good boys, and I’ll see if I can arrange that.”

She was saying good-bye to her brothers, and a half hour later she had taken her chair in the train bound through New England en route for Maine.  The few days spent at home had been so delightful—­even her Wild-West adventure had ended up happily, for Royal Drake, the erstwhile bandit, did all he could to make up for his “crimes,” and even went so far as to take Dorothy to a big tree, in the hollow of which he had hidden considerable loot, during his try at the “wild and wooly.”  This loot Roy took back to his own home, which had been the first scene of his juvenile depredations.  He declared he did get out of a window with the stuff, and otherwise fulfilled the attempt in true desperado fashion, but before Dorothy left him, she felt that he had changed his mind as to the propriety of this line of “fun.”

“I hope I meet Tavia on time,” Dorothy was thinking, as she neared the station where her companion was expected to board the train.  “If she keeps up her reputation, though, I won’t.  Something is sure to happen when Tavia goes traveling.”

Summer folks were taking themselves and their luggage into the crowded cars.  It did seem that the privilege of carrying freight personally was being abused, for old and young were simply bending down under the weight of the stuff for which they struggled to find room in the passenger coaches.

“That would simply spoil my vacation,” Dorothy reflected.  “It seems to me each season evolves some new sort of hamper to be hampered with.”

“Doro!”

It was Tavia!

“Oh, hello—­Tavia.  I was so afraid——­”

“You don’t look it.  I fancied I saw you sizing up that piece of architecture at the door.  Gothic; isn’t it?” and Tavia fell into the chair Dorothy had emptied for her.  The “piece of architecture” took the sofa at the end of the car, and she appeared to need every bit of it for her hat, and other pieces of luggage.