CHAPTER XVII
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND TAVIA?”
“You got this old timer running round in circles, Miss Tavia, when you ask about a feller named Garford Knapp anywhere in this latitude, and working for a feller named Bob. There’s more ‘Bobs’ running ranches out here than there is bobwhites down there East where you live. Too bad you can’t remember this here Bob’s last name, or his brand.
“Now, come to think, there was a feller named ‘Dimples’ Knapp used to be found in Desert City, but not in Hardin. And you ought to see Hardin—it’s growing some!”
This was a part of what was in Lance Petterby’s letter. Had Nat White been allowed to read it he would have learned something else—something that not only would have surprised him and his brother and cousin, but would have served to burn away at once the debris of trouble that seemed suddenly heaped between Tavia and himself.
It was true that Tavia had kept up her correspondence with the good-natured and good-looking cowboy in whom, while she was West, she had become interested, and that against the advice of Dorothy Dale. She did this for a reason deeper than mere mischief.
Lance Petterby had confided in her more than in any of the other Easterners of the party that had come to the big Hardin ranch. Lance was in love with a school teacher of the district while the party from the East was at Hardin; and now he had been some months married to the woman of his choice.
When Tavia read bits of his letters, even to Dorothy, she skipped all mention of Lance’s romance and his marriage. This she did, it is true, because of a mischievous desire to plague her chum and Ned and Nat. Of late, since affairs had become truly serious between Nat and herself, she would have at any time explained the joke to Nat had she thought of it, or had he asked her about Lance.
The very evening previous to the arrival of this letter from the cowpuncher to which Nat had so unwisely objected, Nat and Tavia had gone for a walk together in the crisp December moonlight and had talked very seriously.
Nat, although as full of fun as Tavia herself, could be grave; and he made his intention and his desires very plain to the girl. Tavia would not show him all that was in her heart. That was not her way. She was always inclined to hide her deeper feelings beneath a light manner and light words. But she was brave and she was honest. When he pinned her right down to the question, yes or no, Tavia looked courageously into Nat’s eyes and said:
“Yes, Nat. I do. But somebody besides you must ask me before I will agree to—to ‘make you happy’ as you call it.”
“For the good land’s sake!” gasped Nat. “Who’s business is it but ours? If you love me as I love you——”
“Yes, I know,” interrupted Tavia, with laughter breaking forth. “‘No knife can cut our love in two.’ But, dear——”
“Oh, Tavia!”
“Wait, honey,” she whispered, with her face close pressed against his shoulder. “No! don’t kiss me now. You’ve kissed me before—in fun. The next time you kiss me it must be in solemn earnest.”
“By heaven, girl!” exclaimed Nat, hoarsely. “Do you think I am fooling now?”
“No, boy,” she whispered, looking up at him again suddenly. “But somebody else must ask me before I have a right to promise what you want.”
“Who?” demanded Nat, in alarm.
“You know that I am a poor girl. Not only that, but I do not come from the same stock that you do. There is no blue blood in my veins,” and she uttered a little laugh that might have sounded bitter had there not been the tremor of tears in it.
“What nonsense, Tavia!” the young man cried, shaking her gently by the shoulders.
“Oh no, Nat! Wait! I am a poor girl and I come of very, very common stock. I don’t mean I am ashamed of my poverty, or of the fact that my father and mother both sprang from the laboring class.
“But you might be expected when you marry to take for a wife a girl from a family whose forebears were something. Mine were not. Why, one of my grandfathers was an immigrant and dug ditches——”
“Pshaw! I had a relative who dug a ditch, too. In Revolutionary times——”
“That is it exactly,” Tavia hastened to say. “I know about him. He helped dig the breastworks on Breeds Hill and was wounded in the Battle of Bunker Hill. I know all about that. Your people were Pilgrim and Dutch stock.”
“Immigrants, too,” said Nat, muttering. “And maybe some of them left their country across the seas for their country’s good.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the shrewd Tavia. “Being an immigrant in America in sixteen hundred is one thing. Being an immigrant in the latter end of the nineteenth century is an entirely different pair of boots.”
“Oh, Tavia!”
“No. Your mother has been as kind to me—and for years and years—as though I were her niece, too, instead of just one of Dorothy’s friends. She may have other plans for her sons, Nat.”
“Nonsense!”
“I will not answer you,” the girl cried, a little wildly now, and began to sob. “Oh, Nat! Nat! I have thought of this so much. Your mother must ask me, or I can never tell you what I want to tell you!”
Nat respected her desire and did not kiss her although she clung, sobbing, to him for some moments. But after she had wiped away her tears and had begun to joke again in her usual way, they went back to the house.
And Nat White knew he was walking on air! He could not feel the path beneath his feet.
He was obliged to go to town early the next morning, and when he returned, as we have seen, just before dinner, he brought the mail bag up from the North Birchland post-office.
He could not understand Tavia’s attitude regarding Lance Petterby’s letter, and he was both hurt and jealous. Actually he was jealous!
“Do you understand Tavia?” he asked his cousin Dorothy, right after dinner.
“My dear boy,” Dorothy Dale said, “I never claimed to be a seer. Who understands Tavia—fully?”
“But you know her better than anybody else.”
“Better than Tavia knows herself, perhaps,” admitted Dorothy.
“Well, see here! I’ve asked her to marry me——”
“Oh, Nat! my dear boy! I am so glad!” Dorothy cried, and she kissed her cousin warmly.
“Don’t be so hasty with your congratulations,” growled Nat, still red and fuming. “She didn’t tell me ‘yes.’ I don’t know now that I want her to. I want to know what she means, getting letters from that fellow out West.”
“Oh, Nat!” sighed Dorothy, looking at him levelly. “Are you sure you love her?”
He said nothing more, and Dorothy did not add a word. But Tavia waited in vain that evening for Mrs. White to come to her and ask the question which she had told Nat his mother must ask for him.