“goodness to gracious—and all hands around!”

“this is the muckiest, murkiest, most miserable, muddy day that ever was invented.”

“wish we could set it up somewhere and shoot at it with our popguns!”

“hate to stay in the house, and it isn’t any fun to go out.”

“can’t—can’t we play something?” urged dorothy dale, feebly, hearing her friends all blaming the weather for their own shortcomings. it was saturday afternoon—the first real soft, spring day of the season. it was depressing.

“ya-as,” yawned cologne. “let’s pla-a-ay—wow! that most dislocated my jaws, i declare!”

“play ‘cumjicum’ or ‘all around the mulberry bush,’” sniffed edna black. “you do think we are still kids; don’t you, doro?”

“i can’t help it,” returned dorothy, smiling. “you act that way.”

150 “oh! listen to her! villainess!” gasped tavia, threatening her chum from the broad window sill of number nineteen with both clenched fists.

“well, it isn’t really fitten to go out, as chloe, the colored maid, says,” remarked nita. “and what we shall really do with all this long afternoon and evening——”

“let’s have a sing,” suggested molly, passing around the last of a box of chocolate fudge she had made.

“miss olaine will stop us. she’s got a headache and has retired to her den,” said dorothy, shaking her head.

“i tell you!” gasped tavia, quickly. “let’s play a play—a real play. all dress up, and paint our faces—ned shall be the hero, and we’ll dress her up like a boy. and i’ll be the adventuress—i really just love to play i’m wicked—for i never get a chance to be.”

“you’re wicked enough naturally. it would be more of a stunt for you to play the innocuous heroine—or the ‘on-gi-nu,’” drawled rose-mary markin.

“oh! what an awful slap on the wrist!” cried molly richards.

“et tu, brute?” growled tavia, in despairing accents.

“now, what’s the use?” again demanded dorothy. “you know very well that miss olaine151 will stop any fun that we start in the house.”

“you admit her unfairness; do you, miss?” cried ned ebony.

“she is perfectly outrageous of late!” gasped dorothy.

“to you, too,” groaned cologne. “and no reason for it. you never did her any harm.”

“not that i know of,” admitted dorothy, sadly.

tavia kept very still. she had no part in this discussion, but she felt “mean all over.” she believed she could explain the sudden dislike miss olaine seemed to have taken to dorothy dale.

“if we hadn’t all promised to treat her just as nice as we could——” began molly.

“and we’ll keep it up to the end of the term,” said dorothy, decidedly.

“oh, yes!” exclaimed ned. “we’ll be ladylike, be it ever so painful.”

“it’s easy,” interposed tavia, with a grin, “to be as polite as she is. whatever is working on olaine’s mind——”

“it must be something awful. nothing less than murder,” declared ned.

“and now it’s begun to rain again,” observed cologne, gloomily.

“just a mist,” quoth dorothy.

“well! we could have missed it without crying about it. now we can’t go out at all,” said tavia, inclined to be snappy.

152 she turned to the window again. while the others were gabbling inconsequently, she stared off across the campus, already turning green, to the break in the tree-line where a considerable stretch of road could be seen plainly.

“oh! the poor little kid!” she suddenly said.

“what’s the matter now?” drawled rose-mary. “is sammy bensell’s goat on the rampage?”

“goat? who said anything about goat? what d’ye mean, goat?” demanded tavia, without turning from the window.

“you said kid——”

“and it is! a little girl! just see here, doro!” cried tavia, more energetically. “she’s lost one of those big rubbers in the mud. there! there goes the other——”

her chum ran to the window to look out and the others crowded up to peer over their shoulders. they all saw the little figure struggling along the muddy road toward the school gate. she had a hood on, and a bedrabbled-looking coat, and tried to carry a broken umbrella.

“the poor little thing!” murmured cologne.

dorothy suddenly uttered a cry, backed out of the group with energy, and dashed for the door.

“what is it?” gasped ned ebony, who had been almost overturned.

“who is it?” added tavia, herself bursting153 through the group on the trail of her roommate.

“it’s celia—little celia!” cried dorothy, as she ran out of the room without hat, coat, or overshoes.

tavia followed her. it was a race between them to the gateway of glenwood. they got there just as the wind-blown and saturated figure of mrs. ann hogan’s little slave-of-all-work arrived at the open gateway.

“oh, please!” shrilled the child’s sweet voice, “is this the big school where my miss dorothy—— oh, my dear dorothy dale!” she concluded, and ran sobbing into dorothy’s arms.

there was great confusion for the next few moments—not only at the gate, where dorothy and tavia took turns in hugging and quieting the sobbing child—but when they returned with celia to the porch, where the other girls had gathered to satisfy their curiosity about the stranger.

“no,” said dorothy, decidedly; “you must not all talk at once. it bothers her. tavia and i are going to take her to our room—— no! you can’t all of you come. go on about your business. by supper time celia will be all right and you shall all get acquainted with her.”

she picked the little girl up in her arms—oh, how thin the little body was!—and carried her all the way to number nineteen. tavia “tagged”154 closely, just as interested as she could be in the child.

“how did you get here, celia?” demanded dorothy, gravely, as she sat before the register, “skinning” off the little one’s damp stockings, after tavia had removed the worn shoes.

“i rode-ed part of the way,” confessed celia, nodding. “but bentley didn’t know about it. i hide-ed in the back of the wagon.”

“my dear!” gasped dorothy. “you ran away?”

“bully!” murmured tavia. “i love her for it.”

“hush!” commanded dorothy; but celia did not hear what tavia said.

“yes, dorothy dale, i jes’ had to run away to see you. i jes’ knowed i could find you.”

“but mrs. hogan——”

“she—she wouldn’t let me come,” choked celia. “i asked her. she said i wouldn’t die if i didn’t see you; but i knowed i should die,” added the child, with confidence.

“oh, my dear!” almost sobbed dorothy.

“so i comed,” said celia, blandly smiling upon dorothy and tavia. “i hope you and your lady friend are glad to see me, miss dorothy?”

“oh, aren’t we—just!” murmured tavia, under her breath.

155 “but i am afraid mrs. hogan will punish you,” remarked dorothy.

“well,” replied the philosophical infant, “she can’t punish me before i see you—for i see you now, dear dorothy dale!” she laughed shrilly, threw her arms about the bigger girl’s neck and clasped her hands tightly.

tavia was delighted with the cunning little thing; she did not think of how seriously celia might have to pay for her escapade.

“and to find her way here—all of eight miles!” she cried.

“the morans is very, very smart,” declared celia, gravely, repeating what she had evidently heard older people say many times. “and when jim bentley turned off the straight road i slipped out of the cart behind, and i axed a man was this the road to the school, and he said yes, and so i comed.”

“she must have walked a mile and a half at that!” cried tavia. “she is a smart little thing. and how did you know this was the school, dear?”

“i didn’t know—for sure,” admitted celia. “but it didn’t look like houses, and it didn’t look jes’ like findling asylums; so i ’spected it must be a school.”

“and she never saw a school before!” cried tavia.

“oh, yes, miss dorothy’s friend,” said celia,156 demurely. “i went to school some when i was at the findling. it was right on our block, and the matron let us big girls go,” and the way she said that “big” tavia declared was “just killing!”

“so you big girls went to school?” queried tavia. “how far did you get in school, dear?”

“oh—dear—me—let’s see,” said the little one, thoughtfully. “why, i got as far as ‘gozinto’—yes, that’s it; we studied ‘gozinto.’”

“‘gozinto’?” repeated tavia, looking at dorothy in wonder. “what under the sun does the child mean? whoever heard of ‘gozinto’?”

“why, don’t they study ‘gozinto’ here in this school?” queried the round eyed celia. “you know, it’s four gozinto eight twicet, an’ three gozinto twelve four times, an’ like that. it’s re’l int’restin’,” said the child, nodding.

“oh! the funny little thing!” cried tavia, bursting out laughing. “did you ever hear the like of that, dorothy?”

dorothy was amused—as she had been before—by celia’s funny sayings; but she was interested more now in stripping off the child’s poor garments—for she feared they were damp—and wrapping her in one of her own nightgowns.

“now, you’re going right into dorothy’s bed; aren’t you, dear? and you’ll go to sleep, and then we’ll talk more afterward?”

dorothy’s motherly way pleased the wearied157 child. “i’ll do jes’ what you say, dorothy dale,” declared celia. “but—but has you found tom yet?”

“not yet, dear; but i believe i am on the trail of him,” declared dorothy, softly.

tavia turned her back quickly when the missing man was mentioned. she had never plucked up courage to tell her chum how she had put before miss olaine the printed paragraph about tom moran. miss olaine had never really punished dorothy for tavia’s act; but since that time tavia knew that the teacher had treated dorothy more harshly than ever.

tavia knew she had done wrong, but she did not know just how to straighten the matter out. to tell dorothy would not help at all; and to broach the subject to miss olaine might do more harm than good.

the wearied child went to sleep almost as soon as her curly head touched dorothy’s pillow. the girls sat beside her and whispered their comments upon the incident, while the garments of little celia dried at the register.

“that mrs. hogan will beat her; won’t she?” demanded tavia. “i’d like to beat her!”

“i don’t know that the woman actually abuses her—not in that way. celia doesn’t seem to be afraid of being beaten.”

“she’s a plucky little thing.”

158 “yes, she doesn’t cringe when mrs. hogan threatens to strike her. i noticed that when i stayed over night at the farmhouse,” said dorothy.

“but she isn’t half fed,” declared tavia. “see how thin her little arms and legs are! it’s a shame.”

“i am afraid celia doesn’t have proper nourishment. she gets no milk nor eggs. mrs. hogan sells every pound of butter she makes, too. now those things are just what a frail little thing like celia needs. mrs. hogan is a female miser.”

“a miserine—eh?” chuckled tavia, who could not help joking even though so angry with the farm woman who half starved her little slavey.

“i must go down and tell mrs. pangborn about her,” sighed dorothy. “otherwise there will be trouble.”

“but we’ll keep her till after supper—— oh, do!” exclaimed tavia, under her breath.

“i don’t see how we can get her home to-night. maybe mrs. pangborn can telephone to some neighbor who lives near that hogan woman——”

dorothy ran down to the school principal. miss olaine had retired to bed, it was understood, for the rest of the day, and dorothy was glad. she wanted all the girls to see celia at supper time, and “make much” of her.

mrs. pangborn called up central and learned159 the number of the nearest correspondent of the telephone company to the hogan farm. there they took a message for the farm woman. already the news had gone around the neighborhood that mrs. hogan’s little girl was lost.

“but she is not likely to get ‘way over here for her before morning,” said the school principal. “i do not like that woman, dorothy; and what you tell me about this child makes me fear that she is not a proper person to have charge of the little one.”

“i am sure she isn’t!” cried dorothy. “if we could only find her brother,” and she went on to relate to mrs. pangborn how she and tavia had found out all about tom moran and the rector street school fire, and how the man had disappeared after rescuing the children and miss olaine from the burning building.

“why, that is very interesting,” said mrs. pangborn, after dorothy had finished. “i must tell miss olaine about the child.”