“There are rules to be abided by, Miss Octavia,” said the teacher, sternly. “If you would try to remember that, you would get along better at this school,” and she showed that she expected Tavia to leave the office at once.
“My goodness!” exclaimed Tavia, under her breath, as she departed, “isn’t she the old cat? And she almost tore up Dorothy’s card! I wonder what it meant? Humph! just the same if that card doesn’t show up in Dorothy’s mail to-night, I shall tell her, and we’ll just get after old Olaine. I’d like to drive her out of the school, anyway.”
Tavia, however, forgot about Miss Olaine’s sternness—even forgot about the mystery of the postal card—when the supper bell rang and Dorothy had not returned. By that time the snow was sifting down steadily, gathering in depth each minute, and the wind had begun to sigh in the pines “like long lost spirits,” as Ned Ebony said.
“Oh, dear, me! where can she have gone?” cried Tavia.
Soon it would be pitch dark—or, as dark as it could be with the snow falling. It looked as though a white curtain had been drawn right down outside each window that Tavia looked out of. She hurried downstairs, forgetting all about mail which was now “open”, and asked to see Mrs. Pangborn.
The principal was at tea, and when Tavia burst in upon her she, being used to the girl’s exuberance of temperament, went right on eating thin strips of buttered toast and sipping tea.
“And if it is snowing hard, my dear, don’t you think that our sensible Dorothy will realize it—quite as soon as we do?” queried Mrs. Pangborn.
“But, suppose there was no house near when it began to snow?”
“Dorothy was going out the Old Mill road; wasn’t she? So you said.”
“Yes, ma’am.”