“Of all things, to have that happen just now! Isn’t it too mean!” sighed Dorothy, perching herself on the high shelf at the side of the pump, and gazing dejectedly beyond the wire fence into the pigeon loft, where a few birds posed in real “Oh fair dove, Oh, fond dove!” fashion.

“Mean?” repeated Tavia, who was inside the wire fence, calling live birds, and looking for dead ones, both of which efforts were proving failures. “It is awful, Dorothy, such a doings as this. They are gone, sure enough,” and she crawled through the low gate that was intended as an emergency exit for chickens or pigeons. “I’d just like to know who took them,” she finished.

“So would I,” and Dorothy shook her blonde head with a meaning clearer than mere words might impart. “Yes, I would like to know, and I’ve just a notion of finding out.” Tavia reached for the clean little drinking pan that rested on the shelf at Dorothy’s elbow. She held it under the pump spout while Dorothy worked the pump handle up and down. Then, with the fresh water in her hand, Tavia crawled inside the wire enclosure again. A few tame bantams flew across the yard to the treat. Then the doves left their perch and joined the party around the pan.

“How lonely they look without the others,” remarked Dorothy, as she, too, crept through the wire gate. “And I did love the Archangels. I never saw prettier doves. They always reminded me of real Paradise birds. No wonder they were called by a heavenly name.”

“And to have taken both pairs!” denounced Tavia. “My favorites were the fantails—they always made me think of—What do you think?”

“Think? I know.”

“What, then?”

“Why, accordion-pleated automobile coats,” teased Dorothy.

“Of course! With such dainty white lingerie! Wouldn’t Nat and Ned look swell in such coats!”

“Well, if you insist, Tavia, I shall give you my real opinion—memoirs of the fantails, as it were. They looked exactly like star chorus girls. But I was loathe to bring up such thoughts in your presence. Yet, those birds were the purest white—”

“Oh, how I shall miss them! I just enjoyed coming down here every morning to see them,” and Tavia very gently picked up two of the doves, placed one on each of her shoulders, and then proceeded to walk “around the ring,” doing a trick she called “The Winged Venus.”

But there was very little of the Venus type about Tavia. It was rather early in the morning, and her hair had as yet only received the “fire alarm brush,” which meant that Tavia, upon hearing the breakfast bell, had smuggled her brown hair into a most daring knot, promising to do it up properly later. But it was at breakfast that Dorothy’s two cousins, Ned and Nat, told of their loss—that the pigeons had been stolen during the night. The boys made no attempt to hide either their anger at the unknown thieves’ act, or their genuine grief at the loss of their fine birds. Dorothy and Tavia were almost as wrought up over the affair as were the boys, and, as a matter of fact, very little breakfast was partaken of by any of the quartette that morning. So Tavia did not get back to her room to give the “back tap” to the “fire alarm” hair dressing, and as she now marched around the chicken yard, with the doves on her shoulders, proclaiming herself to be the Winged Venus, Dorothy suggested it might be well to do away with the Psyche knot at the back of her head first, and not get her mythology so hopelessly mixed.

Over in a grassy corner Dorothy was feeding from her hands the bantams. She looked like a “living picture,” for a pretty girl feeding chicks always looks like something else, a page from fairy tales, or a colored plate from Mother Goose.

Tavia had always complained that Dorothy “didn’t have to do” her hair, she only had to “undo it,” for the blonde waves had a way of nestling in very close at night, only to be shaken out the next morning. So Dorothy’s hair looked pretty, and her simple white gown was smooth, not wrinkled like Tavia’s, for Dorothy’s dress couldn’t wrinkle, the stuff was too soft to hold creases. Tavia wore a pink muslin slip—it was intended to be worn as an underslip, with a thin lace or net covering, but like other things Tavia had cut her dressing down that morning, so she wore the slip without the cover. And to add to the “misery,” the pink slip was a mass of wrinkles—it had been making itself comfortable in a little lump on Tavia’s bedroom chair all the night, and so was not quite ready (copying its mistress) to be on parade in the morning sunlight.

“Here come the boys,” suddenly announced Dorothy, as two youths strode down the path toward the little enclosure.

“Hello there!” called Ned. “What’s the entrance?”

“Reserved seats fifty cents,” answered Dorothy promptly.

“This way for the side show,” called out Tavia, who still had the birds on her shoulders.

“I’ve seen worse,” declared Nat, the youth who always saw something to compliment about Tavia. “Say, Coz”—this to Dorothy—“I think I know who took the pigeons, and I want your help to bring them to—justice.”

“Oh, she’s just aching to go on the force,” declared Tavia, “shooing” the doves away, as the news of the thievery was promised. “She thinks those Archangels will ‘telepath’ to her. They were her pets, you know, and what on earth (or in heaven) would be the use of being Archangelic if—well, if in a case of the kind the ‘Archs’ couldn’t make good?”

“She’s only jealous,” declared Dorothy. “Her fantails are sure to fly away to some other country, and so there is no hope for them. They were such high-flyers.”

“Nat thinks he’s got the game dead to rights,” remarked Ned, with a sly wink at Dorothy. “But wait until he tries to land it.”

“Exactly!” announced Nat. “Just wait until I do. There’ll be some doin’s in Birchland, now, I tell you. And if I can’t get the birds alive, I’ll get their feathers—for the girls’ hats.”

“Oh, I am going to join the Bird Protection Society this very day,” and Dorothy shivered. “To think that any one can wear real bird feathers—”

“Now that you know real birds—your Archangels, you can see how it feels,” commented Nat. “We fellows have the same regard for woodcock or snipe. But just suppose some one should shoot those pretty pigeons, and give the feathers to a girl for her hat. She’ll wear them, of course. They were beautiful birds,” and he walked off toward the cage where only the day previous he had so admired the birds that were now strangely missing.

“But who took them?” demanded Tavia.

“Of course, if I knew—” “Said you did,” pouted Tavia, before Nat had a chance to finish the sentence.

“Now, did I?”

“Well, you said you thought—”

“And I still think. It’s a habit I have. And, by the way, little girl,” (Nat always called Tavia “little g-ir-l” when he wanted to tease) “it’s a great thing to think. Try it some time.”

“Well, if I ever get at it, I’ll begin on you,” and Tavia’s Psyche knot almost fell over on her left ear in sheer indignation.

“Do. I shall be de-lighted. But to be exact,” and he drew from the pocket of his sweater two feathers, one white and the other copper color. “Do you recognize these?” and he held the little quills out to the girls.

“That white one is from a fantail,” declared Tavia promptly.

“And the other—that is certainly from an Archangel,” exclaimed Dorothy, taking the pretty bit of fluff in her hand, and examining it closely.

“Well, I found those—”

“Hush!” whispered Ned. “There’s Urania!”