“A three-bagger,” joked Ned, for indeed his brother’s position over the “bag” was not unlike that of a baseball player “hugging the base.”

“But you were just saying, as I came in,” spoke Mrs. White, “something about Tavia’s coming.  She has not sent any word—­any regrets, or anything of that sort, has she?”

“Why, no,” answered Dorothy, “We were just saying that she might be here before we know it—­”

“Who said that?” demanded Nat, promptly scrambling to his feet.

“Before we know it,” repeated Ned, with special emphasis on the “before.”

“However do you bear with them, Doro dear?” asked Mrs. White.  “They seem to grow more unmanageable every day.”

Then Dorothy, making herself heard above the argument, said: 

“Boys, if we are going to meet Tavia—­”

“If we are going to meet her!” exclaimed Nat, interrupting his pretty cousin, and putting a great deal of emphasis on the first word.  “There’s no ‘if’ in this deal.  We are going,” and he sprang up and continued springing until he reached his own room, where he proceeded to “slick up some,” as he expressed it, while Ned, and Dorothy, too, prepared for the run to the depot in the Fire Bird, as speedy an automobile as could be found in all the country around North Birchland.

“Take plenty of robes,” cautioned Mrs. White as the machine puffed and throbbed up to the front door.  “It’s getting colder, I think, and may snow at any moment.”

“No such luck,” grumbled Nat.  “I never saw such fine, cold weather, and not a flake of snow.  What’s that about a ’green Christmas, and a fat graveyard’?  Isn’t there some proverb to that effect?”

“Oh, I surely think it will snow before Christmas,” said Dorothy.  “And we have plenty of robes, auntie, if the storm should come up suddenly.”

“Come down, you mean,” teased Ned, who seemed to be in just the proper mood for that sort of thing.

Dorothy laughed in retort.  She enjoyed her cousins’ good nature, and was never offended at their way of making fun at her expense.

Presently all was in readiness, and the Fire Bird swung out on the cedar-lined road and into the broad highway that led to the railroad station.

“I would just like to bet,” remarked the persistent Ned as the station came into view at the end of the long road, “I would just like to bet almost anything that she will not come.”

“Take you up!” answered Nat quickly.  “I know she’ll come.”

“Oh, you feel her presence near,” joked Ned.  “Well, if she comes on time this trip there may be some hope for the poor wretch who may expect her to make good when he has fixed it up with the parson, the organist and—­”

“Silly!” cried Dorothy gaily.  “A man never pays the organist at—­at an affair of that kind,” and she blushed prettily.

“No?” questioned Ned in surprise.  “Glad to hear it.  Here, Nat, take this wheel while I make a note of it.  A little thing like that is worth remembering,” and he pretended to take out a notebook and jot it down.