:

"Boys, if we are going to meet Tavia--"

"_If_ we are going to meet her!" exclaimed Nat, interrupting his pretty
cousin, and putting a great deal of emphasis on the first word. "There's
no 'if' in this deal. We are going," and he sprang up and continued
springing until he reached his own room, where he proceeded to "slick up
some," as he expressed it, while Ned, and Dorothy, too, prepared for the
run to the depot in the Fire Bird, as speedy an automobile as could be
found in all the country around North Birchland.

"Take plenty of robes," cautioned Mrs. White as the machine puffed and
throbbed up to the front door. "It's getting colder, I think, and may snow
at any moment."

"No such luck," grumbled Nat. "I never saw such fine, cold weather, and
not a flake of snow. What's that about a 'green Christmas, and a fat
graveyard'? Isn't there some proverb to that effect?"

"Oh, I surely think it will snow before Christmas," said Dorothy. "And we
have plenty of robes, auntie, if the storm should come up suddenly."

"Come down, you mean," teased Ned, who seemed to be in just the proper
mood for that sort of thing.

Dorothy laughed in retort. She enjoyed her cousins' good nature, and was
never offended at their way of making fun at her expense.

Presently all was in readiness, and the Fire Bird swung out on the
cedar-lined road and into the broad highway that led to the railroad
station.

"I would just like to bet," remarked the persistent Ned as the station
came into view at the end of the long road, "I would just like to bet
almost anything that she will not come."

"Take you up!" answered Nat quickly. "I know she'll come."

"Oh, you feel her presence near," joked Ned. "Well, if she comes on time
this trip there may be some hope for the poor wretch who may expect her to
make good when he has fixed it up with the parson, the organist and--"

"Silly!" cried Dorothy gaily. "A man never pays the organist at--at an
affair of that kind," and she blushed prettily.

"No?" questioned Ned in surprise. "Glad to hear it. Here, Nat, take this
wheel while I make a note of it. A little thing like that is worth
remembering," and he pretended to take out a notebook and jot it down.

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