“Not to save my life!” cried her friend. “Never!”
“Oh, Tavia!”
“You take his side because of that letter,” Tavia said accusingly. “Well, if that’s the idea, here’s another letter from Lance!” and she opened her bag and produced an envelope on which appeared the cowboy’s scrawling handwriting. Dorothy knew it well.
“Oh, Tavia!”
“Don’t ‘Oh, Tavia’ me!” exclaimed the other girl, her eyes bright with anger. “Nobody has a right to choose my correspondents for me.”
“You know that all the matter is with Nat, he is jealous,” Dorothy said frankly.
“What right has he to be?” demanded Tavia in a hard voice, but looking away quickly.
“Dear,” said Dorothy softly, laying her hand on Tavia’s arm, “he told me he—he asked you to marry him.”
“He never!”
“But you knew that was what he meant,” Dorothy said shrewdly.