“Stop tantalizing! What does that card mean? Who is Tom Moran? How _dare_ you have a gentleman friend, Dorothy Dale, with whom I am not acquainted?”
“What nonsense,” said Dorothy. “Tom Moran is--why, just Tom Moran.”
“Lucid as mud! And what, or who, is he to Olaine?”
“You puzzle me a whole lot more than you are puzzled yourself,” complained Dorothy. “I don’t understand--not the least little bit--what you tell me about Miss Olaine.”
“She was just as scared as she could be when she read this message to you, Doro,” and Tavia thrust the typewritten postal card under her friend’s eyes. “Read it and tell me what it means.”
“Well, do it!” cried Tavia. “Don’t hesitate so.”
“First I must tell you about Celia Moran----”
“Just the dearest, funniest, most pitiful little girl----”
“I’m glad it’s a girl this time,” sniffed Tavia.
So her friend began at the beginning--with her first meeting with the child from the foundling asylum in the Belding Station. And she related the particulars, too, of her recent adventure in the snow and her two nights and the Sunday spent at the Hogan farmhouse.
“That Hogan woman is a regular ogress. I wish I could take Celia away from there this very day,” sighed Dorothy. “Did you see her when she drove me in here?”
“The giantess? Of course! She looked so funny in that gray and purple sweater and the green hood----”
“No matter for laughing. Do you know what she made Mrs. Pangborn pay her for ‘me keep’, as she called it?”
“Twenty dollars--think of it? She’s a terrible miser--and that poor little thing isn’t half fed.”
“The poor kid!” agreed Tavia, whose warm heart was touched by the story Dorothy told her.
“She wanted to come with us so badly,” sighed Dorothy. “But Mrs. Hogan made her stay and keep up the fire, and watch to see if the hens laid any eggs. They bring ’em right in from the nests for fear they will freeze,” explained Dorothy.
“I really believe, Tavia, if that little thing hadn’t been out gathering eggs Saturday evening, I would have laid down in the snow and died!”
“I was ‘all in’, as Ned and Nat would say. Just at the last gasp when Celia heard me crying for help.”
“I’d like to hug her for that,” cried Tavia, her eyes shining.
“And so, I must find her brother if I can,” continued Dorothy, not very lucidly, it must be confessed. But Tavia had gained a general idea of the matter now and she said: