“Well, if a man came out your way to settle a business matter, you wouldn’t let him go to a hotel, would you? You’d be angry,” said Tavia, sensibly, “if he insisted upon doing such a thing. Major Dale could not have been informed when you would arrive, or he would have had somebody here at the station to meet you.”
“No. I didn’t tell the lawyers when I’d start,” said Garry.
“Don’t make a bad matter worse then,” laughed Tavia, her eyes twinkling as she climbed in and sat back of the wheel. “Hurry up. If you want to sell your land you’d better waste no more time getting out to The Cedars.”
The Westerner got into the car in evident doubt. He suspected that he had been called East for something besides closing a real estate transaction. Tavia suspected so, too; and she was vastly amused.
She drove slowly, for Garry began asking her for full particulars about Dorothy and the family. Tavia actually did not know anything about the proposed purchase of the Knapp ranch by her chum’s father. Dorothy had said not a word to her about Garry since their final talk some weeks before.
At a place in the woods where there was not a house in sight, Tavia even stopped the car the better to give her full attention to Mr. Garry Knapp, and to talk him out of certain objections that seemed to trouble his mind.
It was just here that Nat White, on a sputtering motorcycle he sometimes rode, passed the couple in the automobile. He saw Tavia talking earnestly to a fine-looking, broad-shouldered young man wearing a hat of Western style. She had an eager hand upon his shoulder and the stranger was evidently much interested in what the girl said.
Nat did not even slow down. It is doubtful if Tavia noticed him at all. Nat went straight home, changed his clothes, flung a few things into a traveling bag, and announced to his mother that he was off for Boston to pay some long-promised visits to friends there and in Cambridge.
Nat, with his usual impulsiveness, had jumped at a conclusion which, like most snap judgments, was quite incorrect. He rode to the railroad station by another way and so did not meet Tavia and Garry Knapp as they approached The Cedars.