“Oh, very well. I was only wondering—”
“But you mustn’t wonder. You agreed to act as my escort and so you must be content with that. I can only tell you that I am perfectly satisfied with the interview I had.”
“Which means that our little friend Tavia is not with any company. Well, I’m glad of it. I always did give her credit for having better sense. But you see, Doro, you are such a romancer that you sometimes make stories out of dreams. But I must say you do look ten years younger. That manager must have been a nice fellow.”
“He was,” answered Dorothy, glad that Nat, as usual, had jumped to a conclusion and decided the matter of the interview for himself, leaving her free to go on without contradicting or making any explanations. It was so much better under the circumstances, she thought, that not even Nat should know the truth.
But just how she was going to carry out the remainder of her task secretly she could not quite determine. However, she had now become accustomed to doing each part as it presented itself, without planning further into the future, and, in that manner, she hoped to be able to proceed until the last link in the chain of her search had been completed.
“We must get the souvenir cards,” Nat reminded her, as they came to a store with the pretty-pictured varieties in the window. “I’ll just buy a pack of mixed ones—it will save time.”
But Dorothy was not thinking of souvenir cards. Thoughts came to her of the play at Rochester, with Tavia as one of the characters—Tavia who must be timid amid her new and unaccustomed surroundings in spite of her apparent recklessness—yes, Tavia would be much frightened at what she had done, Dorothy was sure of it, when the girl, so far away from home and friends found herself before a critical audience in a theatre.
“If I could only reach her before another night,” Dorothy thought, “but how can it be managed?”
The boys would start for home to-morrow, and of course Dorothy would have to go with them. Something would surely happen—must surely happen before then to help her, Dorothy thought, with a confidence which great emergencies sometimes inspire.
“Now I suppose,” remarked Nat, as he made his way out of the post-card store, “if you were to send one of these particularly bright red ones to Tavia at Dalton she would send one back on the next mail, wishing you a merry Christmas, for all your trouble. What do you suppose she would say if she knew of the merry chase that had been going on after her, and all the places you have been looking for her? And all the while she was as safe as little Bo-peep.”