“But can’t I have a window open?  I am almost smothered.  You know I am used to almost living out doors.”

“Well,” then, she whispered, “wait till Josh gets off and I’ll slip up and fix you.  He’s awfully fussy about some things.”

There was nothing for Dorothy to do but wait.  But how long it seemed!  How close the day was, as the sun opened up on that hot roof!  Oh, if she did not get away, surely she would go crazy!

She could hear the old farmer grumbling.  Evidently he was not pleased about something.  But Mrs. Hobbs was cautioning him not to speak so loud.  Of course they were afraid of being overheard.  “If she opens the window,” Dorothy decided, “I’ll drop to the piazza roof!  Then I can escape!  Oh, I must escape!”

She dare not, however, make any preparations to get away until after the farmer had gone to town; until after Mrs. Hobbs had opened the window and until after—­she hoped this would happen—­after Mrs. Hobbs went off to the fields for her berries.

CHAPTER XVII

STRANGER STILL

“You kin mend furst rate, Betsy,” complimented old Sam Dixon, as Tavia plied her needle in the little ticket office, “and do you know, I’ve taken quite a shine to you?  You might be my niece if you liked.  I have a penny or two, and there ain’t no pockets in shrouds.”

Tavia looked up in surprise!  After all, might there be “a fortune” somewhere for her or for her family?  The thought seemed too absurd.

“Why, Uncle Sam, what do you mean?” she asked.

“Even Sam Dixon can’t live forever, sis, and you know it’s sort of lonely to think, that, when he goes, there won’t be no one to think of him, like he thinks of them.  That’s why I want your name and address.  But there comes the train from the city.  Would you mind attendin’ to the window while I run out with the mail bag?”

“Certainly I will—­I know where the tickets are, and can ask you the price if any one wants to buy one.”  Wasn’t it queer to sell tickets?

But that was the train to the city!

“Oh, Uncle Sam!” called Tavia.  “Isn’t that the train I should go on?”

“Without giving me your address?” and he was running down the platform with the mail bag.  “Couldn’t you wait till the next?”

There seemed nothing else to do!  But to stay longer away from camp?

Well, she might as well be content now.  It was too late to get a ticket, too late to say good-bye to Sam, too late to do anything but attend to the people who came in the station after the train pulled out.

“Have you seen the carriage from the sanitarium?”

The speaker, who had just alighted from the train, addressed Tavia, but the latter was so surprised that she caught her finger in the ticket stamper.  Before the little window stood a young woman in the garb of a nurse—­and she wanted the carriage from the sanitarium.