In the second volume, “Dorothy Dale at Glenwood School,” there is given the natural sequence to such an auspicious beginning as the days at Dalton.

There were jolly girls at Glenwood, and some strange “doings” took place, all of which went to show that a girl need not go to college to have plenty of fun out of her schooldays, but that the boarding-school, or seminary, is well qualified to afford all the “prank possibilities” of real, grown-up school life.

In “Dorothy Dale’s Great Secret,” the third of the series, there is shown what it means for a girl to be allowed too much liberty; to grow ambitious before she has grown wise; to act imprudently, and then to have to suffer the consequences.

It was Tavia who ran away to go on the stage, it was Dorothy who found her and brought her back.  And Dorothy kept her “secret,” though what it cost her only she knew.

The book immediately preceding this volume, entitled “Dorothy Dale and her Chums,” tells the story of Dorothy, Tavia, Urania, a gypsy girl, and Miette, a little French lass.  Dorothy had plenty of trouble trying to civilize Urania, and quite as much trying to save Miette some strange hardships.  Dorothy was instrumental in bringing Miette into her own family rights, and if she did not entirely succeed in “taming” Urania, she at least improved her marvelously.

In all four of the preceding books the friends, whose acquaintance some of you are forming for the first time, played their respective parts as best they might, and now, as we find them on this wintry afternoon, they are ready to take part in other scenes, no less interesting, I hope.

Dorothy, Ned and Nat, at the sound of Mrs. White’s admonition as she entered the library, turned to look at her in some surprise, for they were taken unawares.

Ned and Nat were always going to “fight,” but they never actually did get at it.  In fact, they were both blessed with a reasonable amount of good nature, and this, coupled with correct training, was destined to make them men of patience and common sense.

Of course, this time they were only joking, so the “boxing” their mother had somewhat jestingly accused them of was all part of the game.

Dorothy smoothed the cushions of the divan as her aunt advanced into the room.  Ned and Nat both attempted to poke the same log in the open grate with the same poker, and the blaze that most unexpectedly shot up at this interference with a well-regulated fire, attending strictly to its own affairs, caused both young men to leap quickly back out of reach of a shower of sparks.

“Whew!” exclaimed Nat, falling over an ottoman that Dorothy had been lately sitting on, and landing very ungracefully at his mother’s feet.  “Mother, I adore you!” he suddenly exclaimed as he found himself in a suppliant attitude.  “Only,” he went on ruefully, rubbing his shins, “I did not intend to adore you quite so hard.”