tavia is mystified

tavia, among other things, had a long latin verse to translate. this was one of the “extras,” or “conditions” heaped upon the already burdened shoulders of the irrepressible.

“but if olaine wasn’t such a mean, mean thing she wouldn’t have given me all those black marks—so’t i couldn’t go with dorothy on her walk,” tavia said to some of the other girls who looked in on her that saturday afternoon.

from which it may clearly be drawn that tavia was one of those persons who desire “to eat their cake and have it, too!” she had had her fun, in breaking the school rules; but she did not like to pay for the privilege.

“i wouldn’t mind if it was mathematics,” wailed tavia, when ned ebony and cologne came in to condole with her. “but this beastly old latin——”

“oh, dear me! that reminds me,” said the slow-going cologne. “i hate mathematics. there99 used to be a problem in the arithmetic about how much water goes over niagara falls in a given time——”

“pooh!” interrupted tavia, “i can tell you off-hand how much water goes over niagara falls to a quart.”

“oh, tavia! you can’t,” gasped cologne, her eyes big with awe.

“that’s easy. two pints,” chuckled tavia, and cologne was for some time studying out the answer!

“if you’d only learned to be ambidextrous in your youth, tavia,” said edna black, smiling. “then you could write out that latin with one hand and do sums with the other—and so get over your old ‘conditions’ quicker and come and have some fun.”

“ha! that’s what mrs. pangborn said yesterday,” interposed cologne, coming out of her brown study. “she said that with just a little practise we should find it just as easy to do anything with one hand as with the other.”

tavia looked up from her paper again, and giggled. “wish i’d heard her,” she said.

“why?”

“i’d asked her how she supposed a boy would ever learn to put his left hand in the right hand pocket of his trousers. wouldn’t that have stumped even mrs. pangborn?”

100 “and it might have won you another black mark. that fatal sense of humor of yours will get you into deep water yet,” said cologne, wagging her head.

“oh, go on out and play—both of you!” cried tavia. “i couldn’t go with dorothy, and i’ll never get this done if you don’t leave me alone. miss olaine said i must do it before supper time.”

“you’d better hurry, then,” declared ned.

“that’s right,” said rose-mary. “it’s getting dark now—and oh! it’s beginning to snow.”

it was snowing hard when tavia went down to the office to deliver her papers into the strict miss olaine’s hands. the mail bag had just come in and the teacher was distributing the letters and cards into the pigeon-holes which served the school for letter boxes. each member of the senior class had her own little box.

tavia knew better than to interrupt miss olaine at her present task. the whole school had learned by now that the new assistant was not to be trifled with. miss olaine was as severe as though she were a prison warden instead of a school teacher.

idly tavia watched the distribution of the mail. she saw a fat letter put into her own pigeon-hole and knew it was from her brother johnny. dorothy’s box was right next to it. already there were several letters lying in it, for her correspondence was large.

101 then tavia saw miss olaine hesitate with a postal card in her hand. the teacher had evidently picked it up with the message side uppermost. something on the card caught miss olaine’s eye.

she gasped. then the teacher turned white and staggered to a chair. the girl almost sprang forward to assist her; but miss olaine recovered her usual stern manner.

she read the card through, however—there was no doubt of that. then she turned it over slowly and read the address.

tavia waited.

miss olaine slowly recovered from her emotion—either fear or amazement, tavia did not know which. she had evidently forgotten the girl’s presence.

she stood up again. the other letters had fallen, and were scattered on the desk. miss olaine held the postal card as though she contemplated tearing it in pieces.

but evidently the remembrance that uncle sam’s mail laws cannot be violated with impunity, held the teacher’s hand. slowly she raised the card and placed it—in dorothy dale’s letter box!

“now, whatever under the sun can that mean?” whispered tavia to herself. “for dorothy! and she was going to tear it up——”

“well, miss! what do you want?” snapped102 miss olaine, suddenly. she seemed quite to have recovered from her emotion, whatever it had been. she spoke more tartly than usual, and glared at tavia as though the girl had no business there.

“i brought down my exercise as you told me, miss olaine,” said tavia, who was not at all awed by the teacher’s grimness.

“leave it,” was the short command.

“can—can i have our mail?”

“you will get your mail at supper time—with the rest of the girls,” replied miss olaine.

“but i only thought—as long as i was here——”

“there are rules to be abided by, miss octavia,” said the teacher, sternly. “if you would try to remember that, you would get along better at this school,” and she showed that she expected tavia to leave the office at once.

“my goodness!” exclaimed tavia, under her breath, as she departed, “isn’t she the old cat? and she almost tore up dorothy’s card! i wonder what it meant? humph! just the same if that card doesn’t show up in dorothy’s mail to-night, i shall tell her, and we’ll just get after old olaine. i’d like to drive her out of the school, anyway.”

tavia, however, forgot about miss olaine’s sternness—even forgot about the mystery of the postal card—when the supper bell rang and dorothy had not returned. by that time the snow103 was sifting down steadily, gathering in depth each minute, and the wind had begun to sigh in the pines “like long lost spirits,” as ned ebony said.

“oh, dear, me! where can she have gone?” cried tavia.

soon it would be pitch dark—or, as dark as it could be with the snow falling. it looked as though a white curtain had been drawn right down outside each window that tavia looked out of. she hurried downstairs, forgetting all about mail which was now “open”, and asked to see mrs. pangborn.

the principal was at tea, and when tavia burst in upon her she, being used to the girl’s exuberance of temperament, went right on eating thin strips of buttered toast and sipping tea.

“and if it is snowing hard, my dear, don’t you think that our sensible dorothy will realize it—quite as soon as we do?” queried mrs. pangborn.

“but, suppose there was no house near when it began to snow?”

“dorothy was going out the old mill road; wasn’t she? so you said.”

“yes, ma’am.”

“and there isn’t a house on that road that is out of sight of at least two other houses,” laughed the principal of glenwood. “oh, my dear! dorothy has undoubtedly been caught in the storm—and104 has been wise enough to take shelter until morning. don’t worry, my dear.”

mrs. pangborn was so cool about it that tavia was bound to have her anxiety quenched. only—she did feel as though something was not altogether right with her absent friend. but tavia went away to supper, feeling somehow relieved.

the girls of glenwood hall usually had a good time at this hour. as long as they did not become too hilarious, the teachers had been in the habit of overlooking a certain amount of boisterousness and display of high spirits.

that is, so it had been up to this term. but since miss olaine had been in the school a general drawing of the lines over all the girls had gone on until more than tavia and her immediate friends complained of the strictness of the school discipline.

this evening miss olaine sat like a thundercloud at the head of the seniors’ table. every time a girl laughed aloud the stern teacher turned her baleful glance that way.

“something’s up!” whispered edna to tavia. “never has miss olaine looked as grim as to-night. what have you been doing to her, tavia?”

“not a thing!” declared the girl addressed. but the remark set tavia to thinking of the incident of the postal card. she hurried through her supper, was excused early, and went directly105 to the office for her own mail—and for dorothy’s.

“if that card isn’t there——”

this was tavia’s unfinished thought. she obtained johnny’s letter and dorothy’s packet of missives, and ran upstairs to the room. there she spread all of her chum’s letters out under the reading lamp.

there was more than one card; but tavia knew the one miss olaine had read, very well. the other cards were souvenir cards; this was a regular correspondence card, addressed to “miss dorothy dale, glenwood school.” there was no mistaking it.

“well, it’s here,” tavia murmured, with a sigh of relief. “she didn’t make way with it. i wonder——”

she turned the card over. it was the most natural thing in the world to read the brief, typewritten message there:

“tom moran disappeared after the rector st. school fire, two years ago. his union card has lapsed. we know nothing about his whereabouts—if he is alive.

“i. k. tierney, sec’y.”

“why—isn’t that funny?” gasped tavia. “whoever heard the like? yes! it’s really got dorothy’s name on it. sounds just as though she106 had asked this man, tierney, about this other person, tom moran!

“i never heard of either of them. what interest can dorothy have in them? but—hold on!” exclaimed tavia, suddenly startled by a new thought. “what interest has miss olaine in the men—or in dorothy’s inquiry, whichever it may be?”