“Yes, I saw her just for a moment,” and Dorothy looked the other way to hide the serious thoughts that the meeting with Sarah recalled.

“And she has forgiven me for that push into the clouds?  Now she is not so bad after all.  I feel as if I should bring her some flowers or something; as a peace offering, you know.”

“Well, I would not go over just to-day,” said Dorothy, “for the doctor is to take the splints off her ankle—­”

“Splints?  Was it as bad as that?  The poor girl, no wonder she—­fibbed.  I would too, if I had to stand for splints.”

“Why don’t you say ‘stand splints,’ and not use that horrid slang,” corrected Dorothy.

“But she didn’t stand them, she stood for them, with the other foot.  You see, Doro, sometimes the much despised slang is—­the real thing,” and with a tantalizing swish of her skirts, and a most frivolous toss of her head Tavia called “Ta-ta!” and dashed across the fields with the lunch box under her arm.

“She’s the kind of girl!” commented Joe, who had been busy making a bow and arrow for Roger.  “If her brother Jack had a little of her spunk he would not be where he is.”

“Why?” asked Dorothy, “doesn’t Johnnie get along well at school?”

“At school?” echoed Joe, “he is never there to get along at all.  I think it is clothes that keeps him home.  I was going to ask Aunt Libby if any of mine might be spared—­”

“Why, of course, you have some that are too small.  I will see about them myself.  It is too bad those children have no one to manage for them.”

“What’s the matter with their mother?”

“I don’t know—­that is—­of course they have their mother, but she does not seem to know how to manage.”

“And we have you and you do seem to know,” responded the boy, trying the bow to make sure it would not shoot backwards.  “Well, sis, you’re a brick and Tavia, well, she is brick-dust, at any rate, but Jack—­well he is Jack, and that is all there is to it.  I’m going to ask father to let him carry Bugles next week.  What little he could earn would do something for him.”

“Mr. Travers is such a nice man,” went on Dorothy, “I think Tavia is exactly like him.”

“And Jack is like his mother.  But we musn’t back-bite,” seeing the look of reproach on Dorothy’s face.  “I hope you have a jolly good time at the picnic.”

One hour later the girls of Dalton school were crowded around Dorothy, asking all kinds of well-meant questions concerning her health.  Tavia, too, came in for her share of the queries, although hers did not relate to health, but to other interesting little confidences, least of which was, by no means, the new dress.

But the fact that her own cousin Nannie gave it to her put Tavia at ease and questions that might otherwise seem impertinent were considered compliments—­showing what a “stir” the dress created.

Dorothy looked a trifle pale, and the light blue muslin gown she wore brought out a mere gleam of the pink flush that usually shown in her cheeks.  Her blonde curls—­the delight of all her friends, fell in a mass about her shoulders, so that even Tavia in the famous pink and white dress did not outdo Dorothy in pretty looks.