TAVIA IS MYSTIFIED
Tavia, among other things, had a long Latin verse to translate. This was one of the “extras,” or “conditions” heaped upon the already burdened shoulders of the irrepressible.
“But if Olaine wasn’t such a mean, mean thing she wouldn’t have given me all those black marks—so’t I couldn’t go with Dorothy on her walk,” Tavia said to some of the other girls who looked in on her that Saturday afternoon.
From which it may clearly be drawn1 that Tavia was one of those persons who desire “to eat their cake and have it, too!” She had had her fun, in breaking the school rules; but she did not like to pay for the privilege.
“I wouldn’t mind if it was mathematics,” wailed2 Tavia, when Ned Ebony and Cologne came in to condole3 with her. “But this beastly old Latin——”
“Oh, dear me! that reminds me,” said the slow-going Cologne. “I hate mathematics. There99 used to be a problem in the arithmetic about how much water goes over Niagara Falls in a given time——”
“Pooh!” interrupted Tavia, “I can tell you off-hand how much water goes over Niagara Falls to a quart.”
“Oh, Tavia! you can’t,” gasped4 Cologne, her eyes big with awe5.
“That’s easy. Two pints,” chuckled6 Tavia, and Cologne was for some time studying out the answer!
“If you’d only learned to be ambidextrous7 in your youth, Tavia,” said Edna Black, smiling. “Then you could write out that Latin with one hand and do sums with the other—and so get over your old ‘conditions’ quicker and come and have some fun.”
“Ha! that’s what Mrs. Pangborn said yesterday,” interposed Cologne, coming out of her brown study. “She said that with just a little practise we should find it just as easy to do anything with one hand as with the other.”
Tavia looked up from her paper again, and giggled8. “Wish I’d heard her,” she said.
“Why?”
“I’d asked her how she supposed a boy would ever learn to put his left hand in the right hand pocket of his trousers. Wouldn’t that have stumped9 even Mrs. Pangborn?”
100 “And it might have won you another black mark. That fatal sense of humor of yours will get you into deep water yet,” said Cologne, wagging her head.
“Oh, go on out and play—both of you!” cried Tavia. “I couldn’t go with Dorothy, and I’ll never get this done if you don’t leave me alone. Miss Olaine said I must do it before supper time.”
“You’d better hurry, then,” declared Ned.
“That’s right,” said Rose-Mary. “It’s getting dark now—and oh! it’s beginning to snow.”
It was snowing hard when Tavia went down to the office to deliver her papers into the strict Miss Olaine’s hands. The mail bag had just come in and the teacher was distributing the letters and cards into the pigeon-holes which served the school for letter boxes. Each member of the senior class had her own little box.
Tavia knew better than to interrupt Miss Olaine at her present task. The whole school had learned by now that the new assistant was not to be trifled with. Miss Olaine was as severe as though she were a prison warden10 instead of a school teacher.
Idly Tavia watched the distribution of the mail. She saw a fat letter put into her own pigeon-hole and knew it was from her brother Johnny. Dorothy’s box was right next to it. Already there were several letters lying in it, for her correspondence was large.
101 Then Tavia saw Miss Olaine hesitate with a postal11 card in her hand. The teacher had evidently picked it up with the message side uppermost. Something on the card caught Miss Olaine’s eye.
She gasped. Then the teacher turned white and staggered to a chair. The girl almost sprang forward to assist her; but Miss Olaine recovered her usual stern manner.
She read the card through, however—there was no doubt of that. Then she turned it over slowly and read the address.
Tavia waited.
Miss Olaine slowly recovered from her emotion—either fear or amazement12, Tavia did not know which. She had evidently forgotten the girl’s presence.
She stood up again. The other letters had fallen, and were scattered13 on the desk. Miss Olaine held the postal card as though she contemplated14 tearing it in pieces.
But evidently the remembrance that Uncle Sam’s mail laws cannot be violated with impunity15, held the teacher’s hand. Slowly she raised the card and placed it—in Dorothy Dale’s letter box!
“Now, whatever under the sun can that mean?” whispered Tavia to herself. “For Dorothy! And she was going to tear it up——”
“Well, Miss! what do you want?” snapped102 Miss Olaine, suddenly. She seemed quite to have recovered from her emotion, whatever it had been. She spoke16 more tartly17 than usual, and glared at Tavia as though the girl had no business there.
“I brought down my exercise as you told me, Miss Olaine,” said Tavia, who was not at all awed18 by the teacher’s grimness.
“Leave it,” was the short command.
“Can—can I have our mail?”
“You will get your mail at supper time—with the rest of the girls,” replied Miss Olaine.
“But I only thought—as long as I was here——”
“There are rules to be abided by, Miss Octavia,” said the teacher, sternly. “If you would try to remember that, you would get along better at this school,” and she showed that she expected Tavia to leave the office at once.
“My goodness!” exclaimed Tavia, under her breath, as she departed, “isn’t she the old cat? And she almost tore up Dorothy’s card! I wonder what it meant? Humph! just the same if that card doesn’t show up in Dorothy’s mail to-night, I shall tell her, and we’ll just get after old Olaine. I’d like to drive her out of the school, anyway.”
Tavia, however, forgot about Miss Olaine’s sternness—even forgot about the mystery of the postal card—when the supper bell rang and Dorothy had not returned. By that time the snow103 was sifting19 down steadily20, gathering21 in depth each minute, and the wind had begun to sigh in the pines “like long lost spirits,” as Ned Ebony said.
“Oh, dear, me! where can she have gone?” cried Tavia.
Soon it would be pitch dark—or, as dark as it could be with the snow falling. It looked as though a white curtain had been drawn right down outside each window that Tavia looked out of. She hurried downstairs, forgetting all about mail which was now “open”, and asked to see Mrs. Pangborn.
The principal was at tea, and when Tavia burst in upon her she, being used to the girl’s exuberance22 of temperament23, went right on eating thin strips of buttered toast and sipping24 tea.
“And if it is snowing hard, my dear, don’t you think that our sensible Dorothy will realize it—quite as soon as we do?” queried25 Mrs. Pangborn.
“But, suppose there was no house near when it began to snow?”
“Dorothy was going out the Old Mill road; wasn’t she? So you said.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And there isn’t a house on that road that is out of sight of at least two other houses,” laughed the principal of Glenwood. “Oh, my dear! Dorothy has undoubtedly26 been caught in the storm—and104 has been wise enough to take shelter until morning. Don’t worry, my dear.”
Mrs. Pangborn was so cool about it that Tavia was bound to have her anxiety quenched27. Only—she did feel as though something was not altogether right with her absent friend. But Tavia went away to supper, feeling somehow relieved.
The girls of Glenwood Hall usually had a good time at this hour. As long as they did not become too hilarious28, the teachers had been in the habit of overlooking a certain amount of boisterousness29 and display of high spirits.
That is, so it had been up to this term. But since Miss Olaine had been in the school a general drawing of the lines over all the girls had gone on until more than Tavia and her immediate30 friends complained of the strictness of the school discipline.
This evening Miss Olaine sat like a thundercloud at the head of the seniors’ table. Every time a girl laughed aloud the stern teacher turned her baleful glance that way.
“Something’s up!” whispered Edna to Tavia. “Never has Miss Olaine looked as grim as to-night. What have you been doing to her, Tavia?”
“Not a thing!” declared the girl addressed. But the remark set Tavia to thinking of the incident of the postal card. She hurried through her supper, was excused early, and went directly105 to the office for her own mail—and for Dorothy’s.
“If that card isn’t there——”
This was Tavia’s unfinished thought. She obtained Johnny’s letter and Dorothy’s packet of missives, and ran upstairs to the room. There she spread all of her chum’s letters out under the reading lamp.
There was more than one card; but Tavia knew the one Miss Olaine had read, very well. The other cards were souvenir cards; this was a regular correspondence card, addressed to “Miss Dorothy Dale, Glenwood School.” There was no mistaking it.
“Well, it’s here,” Tavia murmured, with a sigh of relief. “She didn’t make way with it. I wonder——”
She turned the card over. It was the most natural thing in the world to read the brief, typewritten message there:
“Tom Moran disappeared after the Rector St. School fire, two years ago. His union Card has lapsed31. We know nothing about his whereabouts—if he is alive.
“I. K. Tierney, Sec’y.”
“Why—isn’t that funny?” gasped Tavia. “Whoever heard the like? Yes! it’s really got Dorothy’s name on it. Sounds just as though she106 had asked this man, Tierney, about this other person, Tom Moran!
“I never heard of either of them. What interest can Dorothy have in them? But—hold on!” exclaimed Tavia, suddenly startled by a new thought. “What interest has Miss Olaine in the men—or in Dorothy’s inquiry32, whichever it may be?”
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1
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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wailed
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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condole
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| v.同情；慰问 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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ambidextrous
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| adj.双手很灵巧的，熟练的，两面派的 | |
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giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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stumped
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| 僵直地行走，跺步行走( stump的过去式和过去分词 )； 把（某人）难住； 使为难； （选举前）在某一地区作政治性巡回演说 | |
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warden
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| n.监察员，监狱长，看守人，监护人 | |
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11
postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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12
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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13
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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14
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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impunity
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| n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
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16
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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tartly
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| adv.辛辣地，刻薄地 | |
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awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sifting
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| n.筛，过滤v.筛( sift的现在分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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22
exuberance
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| n.丰富；繁荣 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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24
sipping
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
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queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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quenched
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| 解（渴）( quench的过去式和过去分词 )； 终止（某事物）； （用水）扑灭（火焰等）； 将（热物体）放入水中急速冷却 | |
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28
hilarious
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| adj.充满笑声的，欢闹的；[反]depressed | |
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boisterousness
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| n.喧闹；欢跃；（风暴）狂烈 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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31
lapsed
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| adj.流失的，堕落的v.退步( lapse的过去式和过去分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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