Tavia Travers, her most intimate girl chum and as different from Dorothy as night from day, had helped and encouraged the latter in her great undertaking. Since then the two girls had been inseparable.
Later Major Dale had come into a considerable fortune so that he was no longer compelled to depend upon the Bugle for his livelihood. As a result, the Dale family moved to The Cedars, a handsome estate at North Birchlands, where already lived the Major’s widowed sister and her two sons, Ned and Nat White, both older than Dorothy.
At Glenwood School Dorothy started on a different life. Her school adventures were many and interesting, and in these Dorothy and Tavia never failed to take a leading part.
In the volume directly preceding this, entitled “Dorothy Dale’s Engagement,” Dorothy met romance in the person of handsome Garry Knapp, a young Westerner who dreamed of raising wheat on his ranch near Desert City. True love followed its proverbially rocky course with the two young people, but the death of Garry’s Uncle Terry and the legacy of a considerable fortune left him by the old man magically smoothed the path for them.
Now we find Dorothy again in Dalton with Tavia, looking forward to her next meeting with Garry Knapp and, despite all her common sense and will power, missing him desperately in the meantime.
And to her here had come Nat with this terrifying news about Joe.
What was she going to do? How was she going to find her brother?
She turned to Nat again pleadingly.
“Tell me all about it, Nat; every little thing. Perhaps that will help me think what I should do.”
“I’ve told you all I know about Joe——”