“Out with them,” advised her father. “Here are two old folks who have been solving problems all their lives. Maybe we can help.”
Dorothy laughed again. “Try this one,” she said, with her eyes upon the quartette “harmonizing” at the piano in dulcet tones, singing “Seeing Nellie Ho-o-ome.” “Which of our big boys does Tavia like best?”
“Goodness!” exclaimed her aunt, while the major chuckled mellowly. “Don’t you know, really, Dorothy? I was going to ask you. I thought, of course, Tavia confided everything to you.”
“Sooner or later she may,” the young woman said, still with the thoughtful air upon her. “But I am as much in the dark about this query as anybody—perhaps as the boys themselves.”
“Humph!” muttered the major. “Which of them likes her the better?”
“And that I’d like to know,” said his sister earnestly. “There is another thing, Dorothy: Which of my sons is destined to fall in love with this very, very pretty girl you have invited here—Jennie Hapgood, I mean?”
“Oh! they’re all doing it, are they?” grunted the major. “How about our Dorothy? Where does she come in? No mate for her?”
“I think I shall probably become an old maid,” Dorothy Dale said, but with a conscious flush that made her aunt watch her in a puzzled way for some time.
But the major put back his head and laughed delightedly. “No more chance of your remaining a spinster—when you are really old enough to be called one—than there is of my leading troops into battle again,” he declared with warmth. “Hey, Sister?”
“Our Dorothy is too attractive I am sure to escape the chance to marry, at least,” said Aunt Winnie, still watching her niece with clouded gaze. “I wonder whence the right knight will come riding—from north, or south, east or west?”