"Great head," commented Tavia, "but do you realize that we shall be locked out? That the ogresses of "Glen" will be ready--axe in hand, block in evidence, grin prominent----"
"Tavia!" exclaimed Dorothy, "do gather yourself up! That bundle of hay seems enchanted. As Nita says, we must be going."
Tavia almost lolled over on the soft hay, then she gathered it up with conspicuous tenderness, pressed it fondly to her heart, and agreed to start on. Each of the other girls was taking with her, back to the school, a similar souvenir; but Cologne and Dorothy threw theirs over their shoulder, in true rustic fashion, while Nita complained that she was not able to carry hers; though she did manage to bribe Tavia with a promised return of the chocolates to tie hers in with the extra sized bundle that Tavia was lugging along.
"Five miles of this will just about do me," declared Cologne. "I think it would have been infinitely better for us to have hitched on to the hay wagon, in spite of the old farmer."
"And to think that we paid him in advance! It"s a wonder we have never had a single lesson in financial economy at gloomy Glenwood. "How to cheat farmers; or, how to die game in a hayrick!" I must suggest the text to Mrs. Pangborn, our honored princ.i.p.al," declared Edna, as she, too, made her way along under the uncertain weight of a bundle of hay.
"But what are we dragging this stuff along for?" asked Dorothy. "Sure as fate, we will have to drop them when we get within the city, and why not antic.i.p.ate? I vote for a drop right here!"
"Never!" declared Tavia. "These are to make up the sacrificial altar.
If old Pangborn growls--won"t allow the doors open--we will do it with a match!" and she signified that the hay would make a spontaneous blaze in that lamentable instance.
Dorothy saw more than a joke in the remark. Tavia was so ridiculously daring! It would be very wise to get rid of the hay before entering the sacred precincts of Glenwood.
The sight was most absurd. Five pretty girls, each dressed in the Glenwood blue and white, and each with a bundle of fragrant hay on her shoulder.
"There"s a lamb!" declared Cologne. "I could do worse than give Mary"s pet a treat," and she ran to the rail fence, jumped up on one of the queer crossed posts, and called all sorts of names to the surprised sheep, that scarcely stopped grazing to notice the girls outside of the barrier.
This spectacle induced the other students to climb up on the crooked fence, and presently the old rails were ornamented with the five girls in blue, with the hay bundles in hand!
It was getting dusk, and the sunset did not detract from the unusual scene. Great shafts of gold and scarlet fell down on that old fence, and a prettier sight could scarcely have been worked up, much less imagined.
"Here, sheepy, sheepy!" called Tavia.
"Here, lamby, lamby, lamby!" pleaded Dorothy.
"Here, woolly, woolly, woolly!" invited Nita.
"Here, kinky, kinky, kinky!" induced Edna.
"Here, Flossy, Flossy, Flossy!" persuaded Cologne.
But never a lamb, sheep or other species of animal named made a move toward the fence.
"I"ll get a few!" declared Tavia, jumping down over the fence, into the meadow, and racing wildly among the sheep.
"The ram! The ram!" shouted Edna. "Tavia! He is coming directly for you!"
This was a signal for Tavia to turn back to the fence. The ram did follow her. She pulled down a rail, and bolted through the opening just as the savage animal and the great herd of sheep followed.
"Run, sheep, run!" yelled Edna, as the much-terrified girls scattered hither and thither, along the road, fully conscious that they were responsible for the safety of the frantic flock that had broken loose from their pasture.
"Now for the farmer and his whip!" gasped Dorothy. "I thought we had had enough of that for one afternoon!"
"Too much is enough," answered Edna dryly, "but Tavia likes it. May she have a real account of the little lamb story for the English cla.s.s to-morrow."
"Look! They are all following her!" moaned Nita.
"And they seem to think she is taking them home to supper!" added Cologne.
"What shall we do?" wailed Nita. "We will surely all be arrested!"
"Wish the police van would hurry up, then," sighed Edna, "I am getting tuckered out," and she glanced back again, to behold Tavia in the very midst of the flock of the now somewhat quieted sheep.
"A nice cool cell wouldn"t be so bad," declared Cologne, who, being inclined to flesh, was apt to give out before her companions would give in.
"How are the "Bo-Peepers"?" yelled Tavia, with a flourish of a stick meant to represent a shepherdess crook. "Or do you prefer the old Roman? There will be all kinds of conflagrations when Nero comes!"
"Isn"t she dreadful!" retorted Nita, whose face was really a sickly white. "She gets us all into trouble, and then gloats over it."
"You wanted something real to write about to-day," Edna reminded her.
"This would make a regular thriller!"
"But, as a matter of fact," began Dorothy seriously, as she stopped, and her companions halted with her, "what had we best do? We cannot walk into Glenwood Hall with a herd of sheep at our heels," for the animals were now following the girls along the road.
"Let"s shoo them," suggested Cologne. "Maybe they"ll shoo nicely."
"We"ll get shooed when we try to get in to-night," murmured Edna. "And just when we were finishing up the year in rather good style. I hadn"t a single thing against my name----"
"There"s that man who saved the team," gasped Dorothy. "Mercy!
Wherever does he come from? A man is worse than two herds of sheep--in our sc.r.a.pe with Mrs. Pangborn!"
Just as mysteriously as he had appeared before, the man with the Chesterfieldian walk, and the big slouch hat, turned into the road.
Where he had come from, n.o.body could imagine.
"He has followed us!" breathed Nita. "Oh, dear me!" and she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.
"If you cry we will tell him you are too ill to walk, and then, maybe he"ll offer to carry you," blurted out Edna. "If one insists on being a baby, she must be babied."
This charge rather frightened Nita back to courage, or at least she pretended to it, for she promptly quickened her pace, and even hid away her handkerchief.
Tavia, too, saw the strange man as he emerged, seemingly, from nowhere, for she started on a run, laughing uproariously at the herd of sheep that trotted as she increased her pace, turned as she turned, and, in fact, seemed to be at a regular game of "follow the leader."
The young man stood carefully posed in the path, just where a huge stone afforded him a setting for his rather dusty boots.
"What a chap!" commented Edna. "Seems to me he has enough strikes and poses to make a good cigar box picture."
"Any particular brand?" asked Dorothy. "I might label it "Spectacular," with all rights reserved."
"Look at Tavia," begged Cologne with a smile. "The rights are "reserved" in her particular direction."
"She"s welcome," finished Dorothy, just as Tavia reached the spot where the other girls were now waiting, and where the young man stood like a statue.
"Another situation?" remarked the man, doffing his hat in the most gorgeous bow.
"Yes, the climax," answered Tavia. "What do you think of the scenery?"