“Tavia, get up! It’s seven o’clock, and I must go up to the stables!”

So Dorothy called the next morning, but whether Tavia was too much awake to do anything so “foolish” as to get up, and interview Jake, or whether she was still sleeping, Dorothy took no further time to inquire, for if she did so her own time would go with the effort. Instead, she dressed hastily, and, slipping a coat on, for the morning was heavy with dew, she quietly went up the gravel path toward the stable. There was a wind and a turn in the road, and from this spot, where big white stone marked “danger” for auto or carriage, the public road opened in a short, sharp “V.”

On either side was heavy shrubbery, the pride of the gardener, and the pleasure of the girls who loved late or early blossoms, for the hedge was composed of such shrubs as sent forth both.

The soft, lavender, feather-blossom was plentiful now, and as Dorothy passed along she121 stopped to gather a spray. As she did so she heard something like a whine.

She listened! It could not be a cat. There was Jake waiting at the stable door. What should she say to him? She did not hurry off, for that cry certainly came from the bush.

Carefully she pushed back the brambles. Then she called softly, as to some animal.

The answer came. It was a faint bark! A dog surely. She glanced up to the stable, to see if Jake was still there so that she might call him; but he had gone.

Then she whistled the call for a dog, but could see nothing but a movement of the briars.

“He must be in there,” she told herself, “and I will have to crawl in and get him. Something must have him fast.”

Tucking her skirts about her as best she could, she raised bush after bush, until she was well within the hedge. Then she could see where the sound came from.

It was under a hawthorn!

She raised that, and there beheld little Ravelings!

“Oh, you poor little thing!” she said aloud. “How ever did you get there?”

In spite of her anxiety that the precious animal might be injured, it must be admitted that Dorothy was glad to see him.

122 Now she would have to tell nothing to Jacob. She would just hand him his dog.

“Come, Ravelings,” she coaxed, and the white fuzzy head moved but the legs refused to do so.

“............