"Boys, if we are going to meet Tavia——"
"If we are going to meet her!" exclaimed Nat, interrupting his pretty cousin, and putting a great deal of emphasis on the first word. "There's no 'if' in this deal. We are going," and he sprang up and continued springing until he reached his own room, where he proceeded to "slick up some," as he expressed it, while Ned, and Dorothy, too, prepared for the run to the depot in the Fire Bird, as speedy an automobile as could be found in all the country around North Birchland.
"Take plenty of robes," cautioned Mrs. White as the machine puffed and throbbed up to the front door. "It's getting colder, I think, and may snow at any moment."
"No such luck," grumbled Nat. "I never saw such fine, cold weather, and not a flake of snow. What's that about a 'green Christmas, and a fat graveyard'? Isn't there some proverb to that effect?"
"Oh, I surely think it will snow before Christmas," said Dorothy. "And we have plenty of robes, auntie, if the storm should come up suddenly."
"Come down, you mean," teased Ned, who seemed to be in just the proper mood for that sort of thing.
Dorothy laughed in retort. She enjoyed her cousins' good nature, and was never offended at their way of making fun at her expense.
Presently all was in readiness, and the Fire Bird swung out on the cedar-lined road and into the broad highway that led to the railroad station.
"I would just like to bet," remarked the persistent Ned as the station came into view at the end of the long road, "I would just like to bet almost anything that she will not come."
"Take you up!" answered Nat quickly. "I know she'll come."