“All right, Doro,” answered Tavia.  “You’re the coacher.  I’ll go wherever you like, only please don’t ask me to select anything to go out to Glenwood—­I want to forget there is such a place as Glenwood School.”

“Why, Tavia!” exclaimed Dorothy.  “You are surely going to send some remembrance to Mrs. Pangborn!  Surely you would not forget the principal, even if you do overlook the teachers.”

“Not a thing,” declared Tavia, shaking her bronze head decidedly.  “Fact is, I’m awfully hard up, Doro, and I would rather forget Pangborn than—­go without a month’s supply of fudge.”

“Hard up!  Why, Tavia, you wrote me you had five dollars to spend.”

“So I did—­then, but I lost it since.”

“Lost it?  How?  Wasn’t that too bad!”

“I should say so,” replied Tavia, turning to her memorandum book, as if to dismiss the subject.

“But how did you lose it, Tavia?” persisted the sympathetic Dorothy.

“Oh, I didn’t exactly lose it, but I had to spend it for other things,” said Tavia with a show of impatience.

“Then I’m just going to divide with you,” declared Dorothy, for she knew perfectly well that Tavia was not in the circumstances that she herself enjoyed, surmised that indeed Tavia did have to spend her holiday money for some needed articles.

“Oh, no, thank you,” objected Tavia, the color racing into her cheeks, “I suppose I might have done without—­”

“Now, you must let me have my way, Tavia,” insisted Dorothy, instantly opening her pretty beaded purse to divide its contents.

“But, Doro, dear,” faltered Tavia, “you don’t understand.  It was not for anything for myself—­”

“Then all the more reason that you should be reimbursed,” insisted Dorothy.  “I don’t want to know anything about it, but you must let me share with you.  Why, what fun would I have giving and buying, with you just looking on?”

So Tavia said no more, but as she accepted the money from her loyal little friend a guilty flush would persist in staining her cheeks, and she avoided Dorothy’s wondering blue eyes when she asked: 

“Now, what are you going to send home?  We must get the things first that will have to be sent away.”

“I’ve fixed all that,” stammered Tavia.  “I won’t have to get anything to send home.”

“I didn’t want to take her money,” Tavia tried to tell herself, “and I was willing to tell her all about it, but she wouldn’t listen.  Now, if only I can manage to get Nat to keep quiet.  But, at any rate, I did not mean to deceive Dorothy.”

But all the same Tavia did not relish the handling of Dorothy’s Christmas savings, and somehow she took little interest in all the possible gifts Dorothy made notes of, in preparation for the day’s shopping in the city.

“I will have to tell Nat, I suppose,” she was thinking, as she finally picked up the little shopping bag and was ready to start off with Dorothy.  “I’ll tell him to-night—­but I do hate to.  I wish Doro would not be so over-generous,” and she crushed the money in the leather case and put it securely within the satchel.