“Dorothy Dale and Her Chums,” is the title of the fourth book. This is a real story—a plot that deals in mystery and adventure, of a gypsy girl in a cave, stolen goods, and so many thrilling mysteries that Dorothy was kept busy solving them.
Then “Dorothy Dale’s Queer Holidays,” shows how very queer some holidays may be, indeed, when girls and boys unite to discover the mystery of an old castle, where they eventually find and rescue an aged and demented man. But this is not accomplished without stirring adventures, not the smallest of which was the night spent in the old mansion, when the young folks had been overtaken by so heavy a snowstorm that their automobile could not make its way back to North Birchland. The two cousins of Dorothy, Nat and Ned, with other boy friends, protected the frightened girls until rescue finally came at almost daybreak.
The story of a mistaken identity is told of in the sixth volume of the series, “Dorothy Dale’s Camping Days.” To be mistaken for a demented girl, captured and held in the hot, blistering attic of a farmhouse, then taken to a sanitarium, where Dorothy is really believed to be the girl who escaped from that institution, was surely an ordeal for Dorothy. But not less is the latter part of that story, where the real sick girl is found by our friends, Dorothy and Tavia, and the joyous conclusion of her complete recovery, and the opening of a new life to this girl, so dear to her mother’s heart, and so loved by her friends, make up for all the suffering.
So Dorothy Dale has had some experience, and we hope, in the present volume, she will sustain her reputation, as that of the up-to-date girl, with will power and ambition, “tied with a little blue bow of sentiment.”
We left them at Strathaway Bridge, and night is coming, as it always does come, just when there are so many daylight things to be done.
In the excitement that followed the announcement that the bridge was down, and the train could not cross the river until morning, all the water that Tavia had inadvertently poured down Jean Faval’s neck was dried up in the heat of gulped exclamations. Even Jean left her seat and joined the conversation on ways and means that were being held in the seats on the opposite side of the car. There were so many suggestions—some wanted to bribe the porter for sleeping quarters, as the trip to Glenwood did not originally require such a luxury; Rose-Mary wanted to get permission to “run” one car for the “Glens,” and camp out in it; Tavia wanted to get up a committee on food-quest, with time-table drinking cups apiece. Dorothy thought it might be a good idea to consult the conductor and have an official statement. The gentleman (“King” they called him now) excused himself, and left the girls so forlorn, all alone there, in a heaped-up convention, that Tavia declared he was a card sharp, and that Ned would get blood poison from the bandages he had put on her wrist. Moreover, Tavia also declared that he had gone forth to “trim” the scared car people at that minute. “For,” she said, her bronze hair fairly showing electrical sparks, “any one would do anything in a case like this. No place to sleep, nothing to eat, just a bunch of loony girls, and—me,” and she wound up with coming down on Ned’s box of butter cups (the candy kind), that happened to be under the lame arm.
It was strange how much that one man had been to the Glenwood contingent. They had fairly stopped talking since his departure. A night on that train now seemed impossible. Tavia went to the last seat in the car, and dared any one to follow her until she had thought it out. This did not take long, for “out” must have been very near the surface.
“I have it!” she shouted, going back to seat seven.
“Where?” asked Dorothy.
“What?” demanded Dick.