your mother, just yet."

"All right Doro, I have given you my promise, but you have made me so
happy!" and Tavia hugged Dorothy so enthusiastically that the latter was
obliged to beg off.

"And I tell you what," went on Tavia, "when Pop gets Squire Sander's
place I--this--me--you know" and she made another wonderful, sweeping
all-around bow, "I will be 'city clerk.' I will keep the books and
Dorothy Hill-and-Dale, if ever your name gets on the books it shall be
promptly eliminated, elucidated, expurgated--there now! Don't you
think I should be in the grad. class? I was looking up words with
'ate' in--my favorite pastime,--and I came across that bunch."

"I do really think, Tavia, that you would do better at school if you
only tried. We cannot always have studies that we are especially
interested in. It is like the scales in piano practice, they give us the
mechanical work for pretty dances and other brilliant pieces."

"Well, we have no piano, so I do not have to worry about that. I suppose
you will play at the closing exercises?"

"Miss Ellis has asked me to. But Tavia, we really must be going. I have
promised to go over to Sarah's this afternoon."

"May I go with you? I just would like to feel that we had talked it all
off, you know. I do not want to think Sarah has any hard feelings."

"Certainly; come, I am sure Sarah will be glad to see you, and her
mother is very pleasant. Be careful not to tell too much about to-day's