CHAPTER II
AT STRATHAWAY BRIDGE
“Not leave this spot to-night!”
The exclamation came in chorus from every Glenwood girl, and there was a low, moaning sort of echo-encore from the young man with the medicine case.
What should they do? They could not swim, that was certain, so they would have to wait.
To break the monotony of this wait we will tell our readers something of the other books of this series, and thus enable them to get a keener insight into the characters we are now following, as well as making a little bow of introduction to those we are meeting for the first time.
In the first book, entitled “Dorothy Dale; A Girl of To-Day,” we find the Dale family; the Major, an ideal, dear, kindly father; the two sons, Joe and little Roger, and Dorothy, the daughter. Tavia Travers, a girl of opposite temperament to that of Dorothy’s, is a great friend of the prettiest girl in Dalton, Dorothy Dale. Tavia is fearless and fearful; Dorothy is clear-minded, well balanced and capable. In this story is related how Dorothy gets a clew to the unlawful detention of a poor little girl, and in the parlance of those who use “quick” English—Tavia for instance—Dorothy “rounds up” the culprit and takes little Nellie away from a home of misery and poverty.
Our second volume was “Dorothy Dale at Glenwood School.” Glenwood School is situated in the mountains of New England, and the pupils there come from many parts of the country, even the South being represented. “Glen School” is not an asylum for the refuge of young girls whose mothers are “too busy” to bring them up. Neither are the girls there of the type who believe that boarding school life is a lark, with original slang at each end; and an attractive centre piece about mid-way, devoted to the composition of verbal putty-blowers, constructed to “get even” with teachers; nothing of the sort. But there is time for fun, as well as for work and for adventure, and a time for girlhood walks, and talks in the shady ways of the pretty school.
This second story deals with the peculiar complications that so readily arise when girls and boys get on well together, in the wholesome sports of youth, until that other element, “Jealousy” makes its grim appearance. Then the innocent nonsense of Tavia, and the deliberate, open-hearted ventures and adventures of Dorothy, are turned about so as to become almost a tragedy at Glenwood.
In “Dorothy Dale’s Great Secret,” our third volume, there is a real secret. Not a little kindergarten whisper, but a matter which so closely affects Tavia’s career that Dorothy takes all sorts of risks to hold that secret from others, until the opportune time for explanation arrives.