“Anyway, it looks like it had been in soak, Neddie, dear,” giggled Tavia. “And to use a slang phrase----”
“I should say that _was_ slang,” returned Edna, in disgust. “The very commonest kind--‘in soak,’ indeed!”
“And that bird on your hat,” pursued Tavia, wickedly. “That is sure enough one of those extinct fowl you read about.”
“Lots you know about extinct birds,” sniffed Edna.
“There’s the dodo,” suggested one of the other girls.
“Oh, I know what an extinct bird is,” declared Cologne. “It’s Billy, our poor old canary--poor thing! The cat got him this morning before I left home, so he’s extinct now!”
Ned Ebony couldn’t take her coat off because she wore Dorothy’s morning gown instead of a street dress. And she had on Tavia’s slippers instead of real shoes; and there hadn’t been a guimpe in any girl’s bag that would fit her, so she was afraid of removing the coat as she might catch cold. She had been used to wearing a fur-piece around her neck and that much bedraggled article was in the big bundle of her half-dried belongings, thrust into the baggage rack overhead.
“I know that fur is just ruined,” she moaned. “And it’s brand new, too.”
“Never mind,” giggled Tavia. “I bet it’s only cat’s fur, and there’s slathers of cats at the Glen. We can trap some and make you a new scarf just as good.”
“I declare, Ned, you looked just like a half-drowned pussy-cat yourself when Doro hauled you ashore.”
“Yes,” complained Edna, “you others would have left me to swim out as best I might alone--no doubt of that. It is always Doro who comes to the rescue.”
Dorothy smiled half-heartedly. She did not join the general cross-fire of joking and repartee. She could not get the wan little face of Celia Moran out of her mind--that wistful little smile of hers--while she seemed to hear again the sweet little voice say: “An’ I’m jes’ the cutest little thing you ever see!”
But Dorothy was afraid that, as cute as she was, the ogress would be too much for her!
“That’s just what that Hogan woman is--an ogress,” thought Dorothy.
Celia had been woefully afraid of Mrs. Hogan; yet how brave she had been, too!
“Somehow I’ll find her brother--Tom Moran--for her,” thought Dorothy. “I will! I must!”
There were five bows of ribbon laid out in a row on Tavia’s bureau, each with a cunning little collar of the same attached. Pink, green--real apple green--mauve, tango and orange.