“Mercy sakes!” exclaimed Dorothy, dragging Tavia in bodily.

“No mercy about it,” objected Tavia, giving Dorothy a peremptory hug.  “I’m simply dead and buried, without insurance.  Frozen stiff, and disjointed in every limb.  Why, I rode here in a dump-cart!”

“Let the girl sit down,” interrupted Major Dale, who left his armchair to welcome Tavia.  “My, but you are cold!  No, don’t go too near the fire.  Sit here on the couch.  Children, run off and fetch a hot drink,” he added, for he saw that Tavia was indeed too cold to be safe from possible harmful consequences.

Tavia dropped into the offered seat, and then she saw Nat—­in the light.

“Glory be!” she exclaimed, staring at his costume, which he had entirely forgotten.  “Is it the plumber?”

“Gas man!” sang out Roger gleefully.  “We had just turned the meter on when we heard your noise outside.”

Nat was not proud, but he had not calculated on being in overalls when he met Tavia.  Ned nearly went in kinks at his brother’s discomfiture.  Dorothy and Mrs. White had hurried off to fetch warm drinks for Tavia.

“You’ll have to get up a ‘visitor alarm,’ I guess, Nat,” said Joe, noting Tavia’s plight and Nat’s embarrassment.  “If we had heard the dump-cart on the drive we would not have kept her so long out in the cold.”

“That’s right,” answered Nat; “we will surely have to rig up something to send signals from the gate.”

“Like the coal office scales,” suggested Roger.  “When any one stepped on a platform at the gate the clock would go off in the house.”

“Say,” interrupted Tavia, “I’m not a regular circus.  Suppose you let me get my things off and give us all this signal business later.”

“Great idea,” acquiesced Nat, being glad of the chance to change his own costume.

“Come, now, drink this beef tea,” commanded Dorothy, as she brought from the pantry a steaming cup of the fragrant beverage.  “You must be perished inside as well as out.”

“Oh, but you should have seen me in that cart!” began Tavia as she sipped the tea.  “You know—­I—­”

“Missed the train,” broke in Ned, who had been just a little joyful that all his predictions had turned out to be correct.

“Never,” replied Tavia; “I was on the 4:10, but I stayed on it.”

“Why?” asked Dorothy in surprise.

“Couldn’t get off,” replied Tavia.  “I was talking to the cunningest little boy, and never knew it until the train was out on the branch, going for dear life toward—­land knows where.”

“And you went all the way out to—­”

“Indeed I did.  I went all the way, and then some.  I thought I had gone even farther than that before the conductor would make up his mind to stop and let me come back.”

“But that train couldn’t stop nearer than a telegraph station,” volunteered Ned.  “If it did there might have been a collision.”