Tavia had always complained that Dorothy “didn’t have to do” her hair, she only had to “undo it,” for the blonde waves had a way of nestling in very close at night, only to be shaken out the next morning. So Dorothy’s hair looked pretty, and her simple white gown was smooth, not wrinkled like Tavia’s, for Dorothy’s dress couldn’t wrinkle, the stuff was too soft to hold creases. Tavia wore a pink muslin slip--it was intended to be worn as an underslip, with a thin lace or net covering, but like other things Tavia had cut her dressing down that morning, so she wore the slip without the cover. And to add to the “misery,” the pink slip was a mass of wrinkles--it had been making itself comfortable in a little lump on Tavia’s bedroom chair all the night, and so was not quite ready (copying its mistress) to be on parade in the morning sunlight.
“Here come the boys,” suddenly announced Dorothy, as two youths strode down the path toward the little enclosure.
“Hello there!” called Ned. “What’s the entrance?”
“Reserved seats fifty cents,” answered Dorothy promptly.
“This way for the side show,” called out Tavia, who still had the birds on her shoulders.
“I’ve seen worse,” declared Nat, the youth who always saw something to compliment about Tavia. “Say, Coz”--this to Dorothy--“I think I know who took the pigeons, and I want your help to bring them to--justice.”
“Oh, she’s just aching to go on the force,” declared Tavia, “shooing” the doves away, as the news of the thievery was promised. “She thinks those Archangels will ‘telepath’ to her. They were her pets, you know, and what on earth (or in heaven) would be the use of being Archangelic if--well, if in a case of the kind the ‘Archs’ couldn’t make good?”
“She’s only jealous,” declared Dorothy. “Her fantails are sure to fly away to some other country, and so there is no hope for them. They were such high-flyers.”
“Nat thinks he’s got the game dead to rights,” remarked Ned, with a sly wink at Dorothy. “But wait until he tries to land it.”
“Exactly!” announced Nat. “Just wait until I do. There’ll be some doin’s in Birchland, now, I tell you. And if I can’t get the birds alive, I’ll get their feathers--for the girls’ hats.”
“Oh, I am going to join the Bird Protection Society this very day,” and Dorothy shivered. “To think that any one can wear real bird feathers--”