“Oh, Vivian!” she cried. “Oh, Vivian! I’ve found you, and I’m so glad! And you’re going to forgive me, and give me another chance to be your friend, aren’t you? Oh, say you’re not going away!”
In another moment Dorothy was on the rock beside her, and poor Caesar had fallen into a rose-bush, where he lay forgotten. The five o’clock train was forgotten, too; for as Vivian sat there with Dorothy’s arms around her, she knew she wouldn’t do anything else in the world but go back and begin all over again.
“My!” said Dorothy, after they had talked everything over for the third time at least. “My! I forgot to give the signal, and Priscilla and Virginia are very likely half-dead from fright by now!”
She gave the three short calls agreed upon, which were immediately answered; and in less than five minutes the two Vigilantes, very much alive and very, very happy, were also sitting on the very rock chosen but two hours before. Then, after all the crooked things had been made straight, after the world seemed beautiful again, and friendship sweeter than before—then, with the ceremony befitting its importance, the Vigilante Order was explained in full to the chosen initiates, and its purpose made plain. With serious faces they signed their names,
Vivian Evelyn Winters
Dorothy Richards
below the signatures of the charter members.
“Everything’s over now,” said the real originator of the order with a happy little sigh, as she folded the Constitution and placed it in her pocket. “Everything’s over, and in another way, everything nicest is just beginning. There’s certainly strength in numbers, and we’ll all help one another to be real Vigilantes.”
“We ought to have a watchword,” proposed Priscilla. “I was thinking of one when I heard Dorothy call. Do you think ‘Ever Vigilant’ is any good?”
They all thought it just the thing.