Poor Dorothy! An instinctive foreboding of danger had taken possession of her now, and, try as she did to dispel it, an unmistakable voice seemed to call out to her:
“Find Tavia! She needs you, Dorothy Dale!”
“Perhaps,” thought Dorothy, “she has run away and is really with some circus troupe, as the Gypsy girl said. Or perhaps she is at some watering place, taking part in a play—”
This last possibility was the one that Dorothy dreaded most to dwell upon. Tavia must have loved the stage, else why did she constantly do the things she did at school, so like a little actress, and so like a girl “stage-struck,” as Aunt Winnie called it?
These and similar fancies floated through Dorothy’s brain hour after hour, in spite of whatever diversion presented itself for her amusement.
The afternoon, following Nat’s trip to Dalton, Dorothy, with her brothers, Roger and Joe, went to gather pond lilies near the waterfall. It was a delightful day, and the sun glistened on the quiet sheet of the mill pond, making liquid diamonds. The lilies, of which there was an abundance, looked like carved wax that had frozen the sun’s gold in each heart. But, somehow, Dorothy, could not work up her usual enthusiasm in gathering the blossoms.
It was delightful to dip her hands into the cool stream and surely to hear little Roger prattle was an inspiration, but all the while Dorothy was thinking of crowded Buffalo, and wondering what a certain girl might be doing there on that summer afternoon.
In the evening Major Dale and Mrs. White, taking Dorothy with them, went for a drive along the broad boulevard that was the pride of that exclusive summer place—North Birchland. Dorothy tried bravely to rouse herself from her gloomy reveries but, in spite of her efforts, Mrs. White complained that her niece was not like her usual self—“Perhaps not feeling well,” she ventured.
“I’m ‘glumpy’ ever since I left Glenwood,” admitted Dorothy. “Not because I want to be, nor that I am not having a most delightful time, but I simply have the ‘glumps.’ At Glenwood they prescribe extra work for an attack like this,” and the girl laughed at her own diagnosis.
“You certainly should dispel the ‘glumps,’” said Mrs. White. “I can’t imagine what could produce an attack here at the Cedars, with all your own folks around you, Dorothy, dear. I do believe you are lonely for those impossible girls. What do you say to paying some of them a little visit, just to break in on your holiday?”