“I wouldn’t let that worry me,” Dorothy said, decidedly. “I am sure that Miss Olaine has been grieving over your absence all this time. She was excited at the fire, I suppose. Oh, Mr. Moran! you can’t always tell what a woman means by what she says.”
“Is that so?” returned Tom Moran, wonderingly.
CHAPTER XXVIII
“JES’ THE CUTEST LITTLE THING”
The woodchuck bake in the grove behind the old school house, which Dorothy and Tavia used to attend, was pronounced a success by the three youngsters. Of course, there were not many invited guests, for aside from three woodchucks and a half bushel of sweet potatoes, there were but half a dozen squirrels baked in the ashes of a huge campfire. These were not sufficient to supply a regiment, as Tavia herself said—and Tavia was a generous body.
Besides the two girl friends and the three small boys, there were the four freshmen, three of whom had frankly come down here to Dalton for this spring vacation just because Dorothy and Tavia were here.
These individuals could not really be counted as guests—any of them. So Tom Moran was really the only guest at the bake. He had recovered Dorothy’s hat and jacket and other possessions from the Daggetts and their friends, and when he brought them to Tavia’s, Dorothy and her chum made Tom come along with them to the picnic.
Ned White had gone to Mr. Rouse, the farmer, and paid for the burned fodder stack.
“Eight dollars, young gentlemen,” said Ned, rather grimly, to Joe and Roger Dale and Tavia’s brother. Rather a high price to pay per pound for woodchuck meat; and Nat figured it out to cost something like sixty or seventy cents per pound.
“Oh! don’t talk about it that way, Nat,” begged Joe. “It will taste so of money that none of us kids will want to eat it.”