She stopped suddenly. Edna was calling her. “I have to go I suppose,” she said finally. “Dear me. I am all ashake,” and without any further explanation she ran off again.
A half hour later she returned, with a very broad smile on her flushed face.
“Dorothy Dale!” she exclaimed. “How ever could you have played such a trick on us. There is no more white dog in the barn than there is in this room!”
“Isn’t there?” asked Dorothy, realizing that Jake had taken Ravelings off before the girls had a chance to see him. “Then he must have been spirited away. That dog has had a great time of it.”
“Spirited away, indeed!” said Tavia indignantly. “I have almost gone gray over the thing, and it was all a——”
“Mistake,” finished Dorothy for her. “Well, then you feel better I suppose,” and she determined not to tell the story of the dog’s second return to its owner. It was too good a joke to spoil now.
“Well, at any rate, I’ll sleep to-night,” Tavia went on. “I have been expecting to go to jail for that five dollars.”
“And you won’t be afraid to go to the post-office?” Dorothy asked. “I am glad of that, for I hate to go alone.”
“And I’m going to the Gleaner office first chance I get, and see if I can’t clear up the picture mystery. I have a faint suspicion, now, how that got off my dresser. But don’t ask me about it, for it is the very merest suspicion.”
“Just as you like, but I would love to know,” Dorothy said. “If I go away——”