“Say, girls!” he began as they neared the dining room steps, “the boys have a great scheme on for to-morrow.  But I am not to tell you about it.”

“Isn’t that lovely,” came from Tavia in rather mocking tones.

“But I am commissioned to tell you,” he went on with an arch look at Tavia, “that you are to rest this afternoon for sufficient unto to-morrow is the weariness thereof.”

Then they began to prepare lunch, but Tavia remained outside, asking Jack some seemingly foolish questions.

CHAPTER X

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TAVIA

After a morning spent in anticipation of the good time Jack had promised (and Jack and his friends did know how to give the girls a good time) something happened just as they were about to start off to the woods.

Tavia was missing!

At first the matter was taken as a joke, as it would be quite like Tavia to run off and hide in the hay loft, or in any other outlandish place; but when, after all kinds of calls, and a thorough search of the premises, she failed to be located, there was reasonable alarm among the campers.  The Hays girls from Camp Happy-go-Lucky, had joined the party that intended going into the deep woods, so they, too, aided in the search for Tavia.

“I give up,” said Jack finally, mopping his forehead, for in spite of the beautiful bracing air of the mountains, the act of running over the hill and into the valleys made him perspire.

“Isn’t it queer!” exclaimed Dorothy, thoroughly alarmed.  “I have a feeling that something has happened to her.”

“Don’t you worry,” Jack suggested.  “You will be sure to find out that Tavia has happened to something.  She has a faculty for that sort of thing.  Let us go off on a day’s fun.  No use spoiling it all on account of a whim—­I am sure it is nothing more.”

“She did complain of a headache,” Cologne remembered, “and I gave her a little soda.  She may have thought it best to hide with the headache rather than to worry us about it.”

“We haven’t tried the brook,” suggested pretty Hazel Hays.  “I am always afraid of brooks.”

“But Tavia swims like a fish,” declared Dorothy.  “I would never think of harm coming to her in the water.”

“Let’s try, at any rate,” agreed Jack, who never opposed Hazel.  “Although, unless that big frog gobbled her up, I cannot imagine any possible danger.”

At this the party set off over the hill to the frog pond.  Hazel trudged along with Jack, Brendon Hays divided his attention between Dorothy and Cologne, while a very little young man, Claud Miller, by name, and the midget by reputation, took care of Nathalie Weston, a visitor at Camp Lucky.

Every one could joke but Dorothy.  To her the situation was beyond that.

“I’ll wager we find her up a tree eating apples,” lisped Claud.  “I never saw a girl so fond of sweet apples as Miss Tavia.  She told me so herself.”