“Oh, Doro! You can’t blame me this time,” urged Tavia, as they hurried on.
“I do not believe the fellow would have dared speak to us if you had not rolled your big eyes at him,” declared Dorothy, rather sharply.
“Oh, Doro! I didn’t!” Then she began giggling again. “It is your fatal beauty that gets us into such scrapes—you know it is.”
It was little use scolding Tavia. Dorothy was well aware of that. She had “summered and wintered” her chum too long not to know how incorrigible she was.
For fear the man might still follow them, Dorothy insisted upon taking the first side road and so walking back to Aunt Winnie White’s home, the Cedars, by another way. When they arrived the boys were there before them.
“Hi, girls! where were you?” shouted Nat. “We looked for you along the station road.”
“Did you come right up from the station?” demanded Tavia, eagerly.
“Sure!”
“Did you see a black-mustached pirate down there by the bridge, with a yellow diamond in his bosom——”
“In the bridge’s bosom?” demanded Nat.