However, Tavia and Nat could be serious on occasion. This very day as the party tramped home to luncheon, dragging the sleds, having recovered the one from the gully, they walked apart, and Dorothy noted they were preoccupied. But then, so were Ned and Jennie. Dorothy’s eyes danced now. She had recovered her poise. “It’s great fun,” she whispered to her aunt, when they were back in the house. “Watching people who are pairing off, I mean. I know ‘which is which’ all right now. And I guess you do, too, Aunt Winnie?” Mrs. White nodded and smiled. There was nothing to fear regarding this intimacy between her big sons and Dorothy’s pretty friends. Indeed, she could wish for no better thing to happen than that Ned and Nat should become interested in Tavia and Jennie. “But you, my dear?” she asked Dorothy, slyly. “Hadn’t we better be finding somebody for you to walk and talk with?” “I must play chaperon,” declared Dorothy, gaily. “No, no! I am going to be an old maid, I tell you, Auntie dear.” And to herself she added: “But never a sour, disagreeable, jealous one! Never _that_!” Not that in secret Dorothy did not have many heavy thoughts when she remembered Garry Knapp or anything connected with him. “We must send those poor girls some Christmas remembrances,” Dorothy said to Tavia, and Tavia understood whom she meant without having it explained to her. “Of course we will,” she cried. “You would not let me give Forty-seven and her sister as much money as I wanted to for finding my bag.” “No. I don’t think it does any good to put a premium on honesty,” Dorothy said gravely. “Huh! that’s just what Garry Knapp said,” said Tavia, reflectively. “But now,” Dorothy hastened to add, “we can send them both at Christmas time something really worth while.” “Something warm to wear,” said Tavia, more than ordinarily thoughtful. “They have to go through the cold streets to work in all weathers.” It seemed odd, but Dorothy noticed that her chum remained rather serious all that day. In the evening Nat came in with the mail bag and dumped its contents on the hall table. This was just before dinner and usually the cry of “Mail!” up the stairway brought most of the family into the big entrance hall. Down tripped Tavia with the other girls; Ned lounged in from the library; Joe and Roger appeared, although they seldom had any letters, only funny postal cards from their old-time chums at Dalton and from local school friends. Mrs. White took her mail off to her own room. She walked without her crutch now, but favored the lame ankle. Joe seized upon his father’s mail and ran to find him. Nat sorted the letters out swiftly. Everybody had a few. Suddenly he hesitated as he picked up a rather coarse envelope on which Tavia’s name was scrawled. In the upper left-hand corner was written: “L. Petterby.” “Great Peter!” he gasped, shooting a questioning glance at Tavia. “Does that cowpuncher write to you still?”