"Dorothy! Dorothy!" called Tavia. "Come here just a minute. I want to speak to you."
"Won't you come in?" asked Dorothy, making her way to the side porch.
"No, I can't, really. But I couldn't wait to tell you. I know what the Green Violet meant by her mean remarks. And it's too killing. I am just dead laughing over it."
"I'm glad it's funny," said Dorothy.
"The funniest ever," continued Tavia. "You know when we got out of the wagon Miss Green was standing a little way off from Alice. That dude, Tom Burbank, was with her (they say she always manages to get a beau), and she was watching us alight—you know how she can watch: like a cat. Well, Tom asked Nat what was the matter, and if he had been speeding. Everybody seemed to know we had gone off in the auto, for which blessing I am duly grateful. I don't often get a ride—"
"Tavia, will you tell me the story?" asked Dorothy with some impatience.
"Coming to it! Coming to it, my dear, but I never knew you to be so keen on a common, everyday story before," answered Tavia, with provoking delay.
"The remarks?"
"Oh, yes, as I was saying, Tom asked Nat were we speeding. And Nat said no. Then, looking down at his farmer clothes, he added: 'Not speeding, just melons.' And the dude believed him,—the goose! Then Viola took it all in and she too thinks we were arrested for stealing muskmelons."
The idea seemed so absurd to Tavia that she went off into a new set of laughs, knotted together with groans—she had laughed so long that the process became actually painful.