"He has followed us!" breathed Nita. "Oh, dear me!" and she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.
"If you cry we will tell him you are too ill to walk, and then, maybe he'll offer to carry you," blurted out Edna. "If one insists on being a baby, she must be babied."
This charge rather frightened Nita back to courage, or at least she pretended to it, for she promptly quickened her pace, and even hid away her handkerchief.
Tavia, too, saw the strange man as he emerged, seemingly, from nowhere, for she started on a run, laughing uproariously at the herd of sheep that trotted as she increased her pace, turned as she turned, and, in fact, seemed to be at a regular game of "follow the leader."
The young man stood carefully posed in the path, just where a huge stone afforded him a setting for his rather dusty boots.
"What a chap!" commented Edna. "Seems to me he has enough strikes and poses to make a good cigar box picture."
"Any particular brand?" asked Dorothy. "I might label it 'Spectacular,' with all rights reserved."
"Look at Tavia," begged Cologne with a smile. "The rights are 'reserved' in her particular direction."
"She's welcome," finished Dorothy, just as Tavia reached the spot where the other girls were now waiting, and where the young man stood like a statue.
"Another situation?" remarked the man, doffing his hat in the most gorgeous bow.