“I know how you must feel,” answered Tavia, “but you see, we are right. The only thing for you to do is to go back and have it all cleared up.”
“Perhaps,” said Dorothy, “I could go with you.”
“Then I wouldn’t be afraid,” promptly answered the stranger. “I know you would see that I had fair play.”
“Good idea,” exclaimed Tavia. “Dorothy could do a lot with the people out there. And everyone knows Mrs. White.”
“In the meantime I will have to wait to see what Aunt Winnie says,” remarked Dorothy.
“Then I’m to stay at the garden house to-night?” asked the boy.
“Yes, and in the morning put on the things I have brought down there for you. You can help the gardener’s wife around the house, and come up to the grounds to see us about ten o’clock. We will come out here where we can talk quietly.”
It was quite dusk now, and the game of “hide and seek” was over. Tavia and Dorothy walked down towards the garden house, then said good-night to the stranger, and hurried back, to be in with the others.
“What a queer thing?” remarked Tavia, all excitement from the meeting.
“I thought so, too, when I was ‘held up’ in the woods,” replied Dorothy. “But, after all, it was a very lucky meeting.”