When the train glided into the station, with a shrill screeching protest from the sparking wheels and brakes, and when quite a number of persons had alighted and gone their several ways, Dorothy and Nat, who had peered hopefully and anxiously at each passenger, looked rather ruefully at each other.  Tavia had not come.

“Well?” asked Nat.

“Let’s wait a little longer,” suggested Dorothy.

Finally the train started up again, the private carriages and hired hacks had been driven off with scores of passengers and their baggage.  Then, and not until she had looked up and down the deserted platforms, did Dorothy admit to Nat: 

“She hasn’t come!”

“Looks like it,” replied the lad, plainly very much disappointed.

Ned, who could see what had happened, clapped his gloved hands in unholy glee.

“Didn’t I tell you she’d duck?” he demanded triumphantly.  “Didn’t I tell you so?”

“Aw shut up!” growled Nat in pardonable anger.

“Ha! ha!” laughed his brother.

“Well, you’re enough to hoodoo the whole thing,” retorted Nat.

But Ned simply had to laugh—­he couldn’t help it, and when Dorothy and Nat took their places again in the machine Ned was chuckling and gasping in a manner that threatened to do serious damage to his entire vocal apparatus.

“It would have been a pity to have disappointed you in your fun,” remarked Nat sarcastically after a particularly gleeful yelp from Ned.  “What you would have missed had she come!”

“But I can’t understand it,” said Dorothy.  “There is no other train until eight o’clock to-night.”

“And that’s a local that stops at every white-washed fence,” added Nat.

“Oh, well, then she’ll have plenty of time to think of the fine dinner she has missed,” went on his brother.  “Of all mean traits, I count that of being late the very meanest a nice girl can have.”

“Oh, so then she is nice?” inquired Dorothy with a smile.

“Well, she can be—­sometimes.  But she was not to-day—­eh, Nat?”

“For the land sake, say your prayers, or do—­do something!” exclaimed his irritated brother.

“I might,” retorted Ned, “but, being good is such a lonesome job, as some poet has remarked.  Now, having fun is—­”

“Look out there!” cautioned Nat suddenly.  “You nearly ran over Mrs. Brocade’s pet pup.”

A tiny dog, of the much-admired, white-silk variety, was barking vigorously at the Fire Bird on account of the danger to which it had been subjected by the fat tires.  And the dog’s mistress, Mrs. Broadbent, nicknamed “Brocade” on account of her weakness for old-time silks and satins, was saying things about the auto party in much the same sort of aggrieved tones that the favorite dog was using.

“Wait until she meets you at the post-office,” Nat reminded Ned.  “Maybe she won’t rustle her silks and satins at you.”