They left the hotel early the next morning and arrived at the first huge department store on their list almost as soon as the store was opened, at nine o’clock. An hour later they were in the silk department, pricing goods and “just looking” as Tavia said. In her usual thoughtless and incautious way, Tavia dropped her handbag upon the counter while she used both hands to examine a particular piece of goods, calling Dorothy’s attention to it, too. “No, dear; I do not think it is good enough, either for the money or for your purpose,” Dorothy said. “The color _is_ lovely; but don’t be guided wholly by that.” “No. I suppose you are right,” sighed Tavia. She shook her head at the clerk and prepared to follow her friend, who had already left the counter. Hastily picking up what she supposed to be her bag, Tavia ran two or three steps to catch up with Dorothy. As she did so a feminine shriek behind her startled everybody within hearing. “That girl—she’s got my bag! Stop her!” “Oh! what is it?” gasped Dorothy, turning. “Somebody’s stolen something,” stammered Tavia, turning around too. Then she looked at the bag in her hand. Instead of her own seal-leather one, it was a much more expensive bag, gold mounted and plethoric. “There she is! She’s got it in her hand!” A woman dressed in the most extreme fashion and most expensively, darted down the aisle upon the two girls. She pointed a quivering, accusing finger directly at poor Tavia. CHAPTER II G. K. TO THE RESCUE Dorothy Dale and her friend Tavia Travers had often experienced very serious adventures, but the shock of this incident perhaps was as great and as thrilling as anything that had heretofore happened to them. The series of eleven previous stories about Dorothy, Tavia, and their friends began with “Dorothy Dale: A Girl of To-day,” some years before the date of this present narrative. At that time Dorothy was living with her father, Major Frank Dale, a Civil War veteran, who owned and edited the _Bugle_, a newspaper published in Dalton, a small town in New York State. Then Major Dale’s livelihood and that of the family, consisting of Dorothy and her small brothers, Joe and Roger, depended upon the success of the _Bugle_. Taken seriously ill in the midst of a lively campaign for temperance and for a general reform government in Dalton, it looked as though the major would lose his paper and the better element in the town lose their fight for prohibition; but Dorothy Dale, confident that she could do it, got out the _Bugle_ and did much, young girl though she was, to save the day. In this she was helped by Tavia Travers, a girl brought up entirely differently from Dorothy, and who possessed exactly the opposite characteristics to serve as a foil for Dorothy’s own good sense and practical nature.