Both girls jumped up, and ran to the lane that wound around the camp.

Tavia was standing up waving her hand bag.

“She made friends this time,” declared Dorothy.  “Just like her to fall into something easy.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE WILD ANIMAL

“Perfectly delicious,” Tavia was exclaiming, in her reckless way, “never believed a barn could be thus converted into a home.”  She tossed aside her traveling things.  “And so sweet of you, Cologne, to ask poor me.  The old joke, as if Rose-Mary-Cologne-Lavender could be other than sweet!”

“And so dear of you to get here,” said Dorothy, with mocking voice.  “We really thought——­”

“Doro, dear, if you only would get over that abominable thinking habit!  See what happened to me when I thought I was was going to be locked up for the night in the little railroad station!  Why, along whisked an auto, and the lady with the scared-to-death-hair looked at me.  Seeing me was believing.  The chaufferine (it was a lady and my French is packed up) asked me in.  That was what I got for thinking on the wrong stoop.  And weren’t they dears?  Did you mind the veils?  First I thought they were hoisted for rain clouds, and again, when I saw the blues and pinks, I decided for fair weather.  There were enough colors to make a rainbow look like the milky way.  And they asked me to come see them!  Asked me!  Why they begged me and made me give a cross-my-heart yes.”

“But you won’t go?” asked Cologne.  “You know the Lamberts are—­well—­they are a troup of theatrical folks, and no one knows much about them.”

“The only profession that hides the ego,” broke in Tavia.  “Now that is what I call cozy, to get away from the dear old nosey public.  I wonder the whole world does not go in for the stage, and get a chance to walk through the streets, and have folks say, ‘Isn’t she perfectly sweet!’ All the while one could be sticking out her tongue, and otherwise enjoying herself—­”

“Tavia!” exclaimed Dorothy.  “Do talk something akin to common sense if you cannot do better.  And don’t mix up your pronouns.  You keep one bobbing through tenses and pronouns as if the thinker were a jack-in-the-box.”

“All the same I would love to go over to that big white house in the cherry trees, and see a dress rehearsal.  They play Shakespeare.”

“You must not think of such a thing,” declared Dorothy.  “Since Cologne does not wish you to go in the strange set, you will surely comply, but I do not have to tell you that I am sure you will,” and she turned away in evident distress.

The next morning the three girls started to camp in earnest.  Tavia insisted that it was her share of work to fetch one pail of water from the spring, because, she said, she had to stoop down so low, and walk so far the effort was equal to Dorothy’s dish-washing or Cologne’s muffin-making.