Dorothy Dale's engagement

But how can three people with all the revivifying flow of youth in their veins remain in the dumps, to use one of Tavia’s own illuminating expressions. Impossible! That tea at the Holyoke House, which began so miserably, scaled upward like the notes of a coloratura soprano until they were all three chatting and laughing like old friends. Even Tavia had to forget her miserable financial state.

Dorothy believed her first impression of G. Knapp had not been wrong. Indeed, he improved with every moment of increasing familiarity.

In the first place, although his repartee was bright enough, and he was very jolly and frank, he had eyes and attention for somebody besides the chatterbox, Tavia. Perhaps right at first Tavia was a little under the mark, her mind naturally being upon her troubles; but with a strange young man before her the gay and sparkling Tavia would soon be inspired.

However, for once she did not absorb all the more or less helpless male’s attention. G. Knapp insisted upon dividing equally his glances, his speeches, and his smiles between the two young ladies.

They discovered that his full and proper name was Garford Knapp—the first, of course, shortened to “Garry.” He was of the West, Western, without a doubt. He had secured a degree at a Western university, although both before and after his scholastic course he had, as Tavia in the beginning suggested, been a “cowboy person.”

“And it looks as if I’d be punching cows and doing other chores for Bob Douglas, who owns the Four-Square ranch, for the rest of my natural,” was one thing Garry Knapp told the girls, and told them cheerfully. “I did count on falling heir to a piece of money when Uncle Terrence cashed in. But not—no more!”

“Why is that?” Dorothy asked, seeing that the young man was serious despite his somewhat careless way of speaking.

“The old codger is just like tinder,” laughed Garry. “Lights up if a spark gets to him. And I unfortunately and unintentionally applied the spark. He’s gone off to Alaska mad as a hatter and left me in the lurch. And we were chums when I was a kid and until I came back from college.”

“You mean you have quarreled with your uncle?” Dorothy queried, with some seriousness.

“Not at all, Miss Dale,” he declared, promptly. “The old fellow quarreled with me. They say it takes two to make a quarrel. That’s not always so. One can do it just as e-easy. At least, one like Uncle Terrence can. He had red hair when he was young, and he has a strong fighting Irish strain in him. The row began over nothing and ended with his lighting out between evening and sunrise and leaving me flat.

“Of course, I broke into a job with Bob Douglas right away——”

“Do you mean, Mr. Knapp, that your uncle went away and left you without money?” Dorothy asked.

“Only what I chanced to have in my pocket,” Garry Knapp said cheerfully. “He’d always been mighty good to me. Put me through school and all that. All I have is a piece of land—and a good big piece—outside of Desert City; but it isn’t worth much. Cattle raising is petering out in that region. Last year the mouth and hoof disease just about ruined the man that grazed my land. His cattle died like flies.

“Then, the land was badly grazed by sheepmen for years. Sheep about poison land for anything else to live on,” he added, with a cattleman’s usual disgust at the thought of “mutton on the hoof.”

“One thing I’ve come East for, Miss Dale, is to sell that land. Got a sort of tentative offer by mail. Bob wanted a lot of stuff for the ranch and for his family and couldn’t come himself. So I combined his business and mine and hope to make a sale of the land my father left me before I go back.

“Then, with that nest-egg, I’ll try to break into some game that will offer a man-sized profit,” and Garry Knapp laughed again in his mellow, whole-souled way.

“Isn’t he just a dear?” whispered Tavia as Garry turned to speak to the waiter. “Don’t you love to hear him talk?”

“And have you never heard from your old uncle who went away and left you?” Dorothy asked.

“Not a word. He’s too mad to speak, let alone write,” and a cloud for a moment crossed the open, handsome face of the Westerner. “But I know where he is, and every once in a while somebody writes me telling me Uncle Terry is all right.”

“But, an old man, away up there in Alaska——?”

“Bless you, Miss Dale,” chuckled Garry Knapp. “That dear old codger has been knocking about in rough country all his days. He’s always been a miner. Prospected pretty well all over our West. He’s made, and then bunted away, big fortunes sometimes.

“He always has a stake laid down somewhere. Never gets real poor, and never went hungry in his life—unless he chanced to run out of grub on some prospecting tour, or his gun was broken and he couldn’t shoot a jackrabbit for a stew.

“Oh, Uncle Terrence isn’t at all the sort of hampered prospector you read about in the books. He doesn’t go mooning around, expecting to ‘strike it rich’ and running the risk of leaving his bones in the desert.

“No, Uncle Terry is likely to make another fortune before he dies——”

“Oh! Then maybe you will be rich!” cried Tavia, breaking in.

“No.” Garry shook his head with a quizzical smile on his lips and in his eyes. “No. He vowed I should never see the color of his money. First, he said, he’d leave it to found a home for indignant rattlesnakes. And he’d surely have plenty of inmates, for rattlers seem always to be indignant,” he added with a chuckle.

Dorothy wanted awfully to ask him why he had quarreled with his uncle—or vice versa; but that would have been too personal upon first meeting. She liked the young man more and more; and in spite of Tavia’s loss they parted at the end of the hour in great good spirits.

“I’m going to be just as busy as I can be this afternoon,” Garry Knapp announced, as they went out. “But I shall get back to the hotel to supper. I wasn’t in last night when you ladies were down. May I eat at your table?” and his eyes squinted up again in that droll way Dorothy had come to look for.

“How do you know we ate in the hotel last evening?” demanded Tavia, promptly.

“Asked the head waiter,” replied Garry Knapp, unabashed.

“If you are so much interested in whether we take proper nourishment or not, you had better join us at dinner,” Dorothy said, laughing.

“It’s a bet!” declared the young Westerner, and lifting his broad-brimmed hat he left the girls upon the sidewalk outside the restaurant.

“Isn’t he the very nicest—but, oh, Doro! what shall I do?” exclaimed the miserable Tavia. “All my money——”

“Let’s go back and see if it’s been found.”

“Oh, not a chance!” gasped Tavia. “That horrid woman——”

“I scarcely believe that we can lay it to Mrs. Halbridge’s door in any particular,” said Dorothy, gravely. “You should not have left your bag on the counter.”

“She laid hers there! And, oh, Doro! it was full of money,” sighed her friend.

“Probably your bag had been taken before you even touched hers.”

“Oh, dear! why did it have to happen to me—and at just this time. When I need things so much. Not a thing to wear! And it’s going to be a cold, cold winter, too!”

Tavia would joke “if the heavens fell”—that was her nature. But that she was seriously embarrassed for funds Dorothy Dale knew right well.

“If it had only been your bag that was lost,” wailed Tavia, “you would telegraph to Aunt Winnie and get more money!”

“And I shall do that in this case,” said her friend, placidly.

“Oh! no you won’t!” cried Tavia, suddenly. “I will not take another cent from your Aunt Winnie White—who’s the most blessed, generous, free, open-handed person who ever——”

“Goodness! no further attributes?” laughed Dorothy.

“No, Doro,” Tavia said, suddenly serious. “I have done this thing myself. It is awful. Poor old daddy earns his money too hardly for me to throw it away. I should know better. I should have learned caution and economy by this time with you, my dear, as an example ever before me.

“Poor mother wastes money because she doesn’t know. I have had every advantage of a bright and shining example,” and she pinched Dorothy’s arm as they entered the big store again. “If I have lost my money, I’ve lost it, and that’s the end of it. No new clothes for little Tavia—and serves her right!” she finished, bitterly.

Dorothy well knew that this was a tragic happening for her friend. Generously she would have sent for more money, or divided her own store with Tavia. But she knew her chum to be in earnest, and she approved.

It was not as though Tavia had nothing to wear. She had a full and complete wardrobe, only it would be no longer up to date. And she would have to curtail much of the fun the girls had looked forward to on this, their first trip, unchaperoned, to the great city.