“No. Your mother has been as kind to me—and for years and years—as though I were her niece, too, instead of just one of Dorothy’s friends. She may have other plans for her sons, Nat.”
“Nonsense!”
“I will not answer you,” the girl cried, a little wildly now, and began to sob. “Oh, Nat! Nat! I have thought of this so much. Your mother must ask me, or I can never tell you what I want to tell you!”
Nat respected her desire and did not kiss her although she clung, sobbing, to him for some moments. But after she had wiped away her tears and had begun to joke again in her usual way, they went back to the house.
And Nat White knew he was walking on air! He could not feel the path beneath his feet.
He was obliged to go to town early the next morning, and when he returned, as we have seen, just before dinner, he brought the mail bag up from the North Birchland post-office.
He could not understand Tavia’s attitude regarding Lance Petterby’s letter, and he was both hurt and jealous. Actually he was jealous!
“Do you understand Tavia?” he asked his cousin Dorothy, right after dinner.
“My dear boy,” Dorothy Dale said, “I never claimed to be a seer. Who understands Tavia—fully?”
“But you know her better than anybody else.”