Then Dorothy, making herself heard above the argument, said:

"Boys, if we are going to meet Tavia--"

"_If_ we are going to meet her!" exclaimed Nat, interrupting his pretty
cousin, and putting a great deal of emphasis on the first word. "There's
no 'if' in this deal. We are going," and he sprang up and continued
springing until he reached his own room, where he proceeded to "slick up
some," as he expressed it, while Ned, and Dorothy, too, prepared for the
run to the depot in the Fire Bird, as speedy an automobile as could be
found in all the country around North Birchland.

"Take plenty of robes," cautioned Mrs. White as the machine puffed and
throbbed up to the front door. "It's getting colder, I think, and may snow
at any moment."

"No such luck," grumbled Nat. "I never saw such fine, cold weather, and
not a flake of snow. What's that about a 'green Christmas, and a fat
graveyard'? Isn't there some proverb to that effect?"

"Oh, I surely think it will snow before Christmas," said Dorothy. "And we
have plenty of robes, auntie, if the storm should come up suddenly."

"Come down, you mean," teased Ned, who seemed to be in just the proper
mood for that sort of thing.

Dorothy laughed in retort. She enjoyed her cousins' good nature, and was
never offended at their way of making fun at her expense.

Presently all was in readiness, and the Fire Bird swung out on the