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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/20213-8.txt b/20213-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7cead80 --- /dev/null +++ b/20213-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2531 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs, by +Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs + +Author: Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + +Release Date: December 29, 2006 [EBook #20213] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD-WILL TO DOGS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + Peace on Earth, + + Good-Will to Dogs + + + + By + + Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + + Author of "Old Dad" + + + + + New York + + E. P. Dutton & Company + + 681 Fifth Avenue + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1920, + + BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY + + + _First printing October, 1920_ + + _Second printing October, 1920_ + + _Third printing October, 1920_ + + * * * * * + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Part I + +Part II + + * * * * * + + + + +PEACE ON EARTH GOOD WILL TO DOGS + +PART I + + +If you don't like Christmas stories, don't read this one! + +And if you don't like dogs I don't know just what to advise you to do! + +For I warn you perfectly frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and +distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story +whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest +in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, +crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular brand of brain and ink +can conjure up on a single keyboard! And very large-sized dogs shall +romp through every page! And the mercury shiver perpetually in the +vicinity of zero! And every foot of earth be crusty-brown and bare +with no white snow at all till the very last moment when you'd just +about given up hope! And all the heart of the story is very,--oh +_very_ young! + +For purposes of propriety and general historical authenticity there +are of course parents in the story. And one or two other oldish +persons. But they all go away just as early in the narrative as I can +manage it.--Are obliged to go away! + +Yet lest you find in this general combination of circumstances some +sinister threat of audacity, let me conventionalize the story at once +by opening it at that most conventional of all conventional +Christmas-story hours,--the Twilight of Christmas Eve. + +Nuff said?--Christmas Eve, you remember? Twilight? Awfully cold +weather? And somebody very young? + +Now for the story itself! + +After five blustering, wintry weeks of village speculation and gossip +there was of course considerable satisfaction in being the first to +solve the mysterious holiday tenancy of the Rattle-Pane House. + +Breathless with excitement Flame Nourice telephoned the news from the +village post-office. From a pedestal of boxes fairly bulging with +red-wheeled go-carts, one keen young elbow rammed for balance into a +gay glassy shelf of stick-candy, green tissue garlands tickling +across her cheek, she sped the message to her mother. + +"O Mother-Funny!" triumphed Flame. "I've found out who's Christmasing +at the Rattle-Pane House!--It's a red-haired setter dog with one black +ear! And he's sitting at the front gate this moment! Superintending +the unpacking of the furniture van! And I've named him Lopsy!" + +"Why, Flame; how--absurd!" gasped her mother. In consideration of the +fact that Flame's mother had run all the way from the icy-footed +chicken yard to answer the telephone it shows distinctly what stuff +she was made of that she gasped nothing else. + +And that Flame herself re-telephoned within the half hour to +acknowledge her absurdity shows equally distinctly what stuff _she_ +was made of! It was from the summit of a crate of holly-wreaths that +she telephoned this time. + +"Oh Mother-Funny," apologized Flame, "you were perfectly right. No lone +dog in the world could possibly manage a great spooky place like the +Rattle-Pane House. There are two other dogs with him! A great long, narrow +sofa-shaped dog upholstered in lemon and white,--something terribly +ferocious like 'Russian Wolf Hound' I think he is! But I've named him +Beautiful-Lovely! And there's the neatest looking paper-white coach dog +just perfectly ruined with ink-spots! Blunder-Blot, I think, will make a +good name for him! And--" + +"Oh--Fl--ame!" panted her Mother. "Dogs--do--not--take houses!" It +was not from the chicken-yard that she had come running this time but +only from her Husband's Sermon-Writing-Room in the attic. + +"Oh don't they though?" gloated Flame. "Well, they've taken this one, +anyway! Taken it by storm, I mean! Scratched all the green paint off +the front door! Torn a hole big as a cavern in the Barberry Hedge! +Pushed the sun-dial through a bulkhead!--If it snows to-night the +cellar'll be a Glacier! And--" + +"Dogs--do--not--take--houses," persisted Flame's mother. She was still +persisting it indeed when she returned to her husband's study. + +Her husband, it seemed, had not noticed her absence. Still poring over +the tomes and commentaries incidental to the preparation of his next +Sunday's sermon his fine face glowed half frown, half ecstasy, in the +December twilight, while close at his elbow all unnoticed a smoking +kerosine lamp went smudging its acrid path to the ceiling. Dusky lock +for dusky lock, dreamy eye for dreamy eye, smoking lamp for smoking +lamp, it might have been a short-haired replica of Flame herself. + +"Oh if Flame had only been 'set' like the maternal side of the house!" +reasoned Flame's Mother. "Or merely dreamy like her Father! Her Father +being only dreamy could sometimes be diverted from his dreams! But to +be 'set' and 'dreamy' both? Absolutely 'set' on being absolutely +'dreamy'? That was Flame!" With renewed tenacity Flame's Mother +reverted to Truth as Truth. "Dogs do _not_ take houses!" she affirmed +with unmistakable emphasis. + +"Eh? What?" jumped her husband. "Dogs? Dogs? Who said anything about +dogs?" With a fretted pucker between his brows he bent to his work +again. "You interrupted me," he reproached her. "My sermon is about +Hell-Fire.--I had all but smelled it.--It was very disagreeable." With +a gesture of impatience he snatched up his notes and tore them in two. +"I think I will write about the Garden of Eden instead!" he rallied. +"The Garden of Eden in Iris time! Florentina Alba everywhere! +Whiteness! Sweetness!--Now let me see,--orris root I believe is +deducted from the Florentina Alba--." + +"U--m--m--m," sniffed Flame's Mother. With an impulse purely practical +she started for the kitchen. "The season happens to be Christmas +time," she suggested bluntly. "Now if you could see your way to make a +sermon that smelt like doughnuts and plum-pudding--" + +"Doughnuts?" queried her Husband and hurried after her. Supplementing +the far, remote Glory-of-God expression in his face, the +glory-of-doughnuts shone suddenly very warmly. + +Flame at least did not have to be reminded about the Seasons. + +"Oh _mother_!" telephoned Flame almost at once, "It's--so much nearer +Christmas than it was half an hour ago! Are you sure everything will +keep? All those big packages that came yesterday? That humpy one +especially? Don't you think you ought to peep? Or poke? Just the +teeniest, tiniest little peep or poke? It would be a shame if +anything spoiled! A--turkey--or a--or a fur coat--or anything." + +"I am--making doughnuts," confided her Mother with the faintest +possible taint of asperity. + +"O--h," conceded Flame. "And Father's watching them? Then I'll hurry! +M--Mother?" deprecated the excited young voice. "You are always so +horridly right! Lopsy and Beautiful-Lovely and Blunder-Blot are _not_ +Christmasing all alone in the Rattle-Pane House! There is a man with +them! Don't tell Father,--he's so nervous about men!" + +"A--man?" stammered her Mother. "Oh I hope not a young man! Where did +he come from?" + +"Oh I don't think he came at all," confided Flame. It was Flame who +was perplexed this time. "He looks to me more like a person who had +always been there! Like something I mean that the dogs found in the +attic! Quite crumpled he is! And with a red waistcoat!--A--A butler +perhaps?--A--A sort of a second hand butler? Oh Mother!--I wish we had +a butler!" + +"Flame--?" interrupted her Mother quite abruptly. "Where are you doing +all this telephoning from? I only gave you eighteen cents and it was +to buy cereal with." + +"Cereal?" considered Flame. "Oh that's all right," she glowed +suddenly. "I've paid cash for the telephoning and charged the cereal." + +With a swallow faintly guttural Flame's Mother hung up the receiver. +"Dogs--do--not--have--butlers," she persisted unshakenly. + +She was perfectly right. They did not, it seemed. + +No one was quicker than Flame to acknowledge a mistake. Before five +o'clock Flame had added a telephone item to the cereal bill. + +"Oh--Mother," questioned Flame. "The little red sweater and Tam that I +have on?--Would they be all right, do you think, for me to make a call in? +Not a formal call, of course,--just a--a neighborly greeting at the door? +It being Christmas Eve and everything!--And as long as I have to pass +right by the house anyway?--There is a lady at the Rattle-Pane House! +A--A--what Father would call a Lady Maiden!--Miss--" + +"Oh not a real lady, I think," protested her Mother. "Not with all +those dogs. No real lady I think would have so many dogs.--It--It +isn't sanitary." + +"Isn't--sanitary?" cried Flame. "Why Mother, they are the most +absolutely--perfectly sanitary dogs you ever saw in your life!" Into +her eager young voice an expression of ineffable dignity shot +suddenly. "Well--really, Mother," she said, "In whatever concerns men +or crocheting--I'm perfectly willing to take Father's advice or yours. +But after all, I'm eighteen," stiffened the young voice. "And when it +comes to dogs--I must use my own judgment!" + +"And just what is the lady's name?" questioned her Mother a bit +weakly. + +"Her name is 'Miss Flora'!" brightened Flame. "The Butler has just +gone to the Station to meet her! I heard him telephoning quite +frenziedly! I think she must have missed her train or something! It +seemed to make everybody very nervous! Maybe _she's_ nervous! Maybe +she's a nervous invalid! With a lost Lover somewhere! And all sorts of +pressed flowers!--Somebody ought to call anyway! Call right away, I +mean, before she gets any more nervous!--So many people's first +impressions of a place--I've heard--are spoiled for lack of some +perfectly silly little thing like a nutmeg grater or a hot water +bottle! And oh, Mother, it's been so long since any one lived in the +Rattle-Pane House! Not for years and years and years! Not dogs, +anyway! Not a lemon and white wolf hound! Not setters! Not spotty +dogs!--Oh Mother, just one little wee single minute at the door? Just +long enough to say 'The Rev. and Mrs. Flamande Nourice, and Miss +Nourice, present their compliments!'--And are you by any chance short +a marrow-bone? Or would you possibly care to borrow an extra quilt to +rug-up under the kitchen table?... Blunder-Blot doesn't look very +thick. Or--Oh Mother, _p-l-e-a-s-e!_" + +When Flame said "Please" like that the word was no more, no less, than +the fabled bundle of rags or haunch of venison hurled back from a +wolf-pursued sleigh to divert the pursuer even temporarily from the +main issue. While Flame's Mother paused to consider the particularly +flavorous sweetness of that entreaty,--to picture the flashing eye, +the pulsing throat, the absurdly crinkled nostril that invariably +accompanied all Flame's entreaties, Flame herself was escaping! + +Taken all in all, escaping was one of the best things that Flame +did.... As well as the most becoming! Whipped into scarlet by the +sudden plunge from a stove-heated store into the frosty night her +young cheeks fairly blazed their bright reaction. Frost and speed +quickened her breath. Glint for glint her shining eyes challenged the +moon. Fearful even yet that some tardy admonition might overtake her +she sped like a deer through the darkness. + +It was a dull-smelling night. Pretty, but very dull-smelling. +Disdainfully her nostrils crinkled their disappointment. + +"Christmas Time adventures ought to smell like Christmas!" she +scolded. "Maybe if I'm ever President," she argued, "I won't do so +awfully well with the Tariff or things like that! But Christmas shall +smell of Christmas! Not just of frozen mud! And camphor balls!... I'll +have great vats of Fir Balsam essence at every street corner! And +gigantic atomizers! And every passerby shall be sprayed! And stores! +And churches! And--And everybody who doesn't like Christmas shall be +_dipped_!" + +Under her feet the smoothish village road turned suddenly into the +harsh and hobbly ruts of a country lane. With fluctuant blackness +against immutable blackness great sweeping pine trees swished weirdly +into the horizon. Where the hobbly lane curved darkly into a meadow +through a snarl of winter-stricken willows the rattle of a loose +window-pane smote quite distinctly on the ear. It was a horrid, +deserted sound. And with the instinctive habit of years Flame's little +hand clutched at her heart. Then quite abruptly she laughed aloud. + +"Oh you can't scare me any more, you gloomy old Rattle-Pane House!" +she laughed. "You're not deserted now! People are Christmasing in you! +Whether you like it or not you're being Christmased!" + +Very tentatively she puckered her lips to a whistle. Almost instantly +from the darkness ahead a dog's bark rang out, deep, sonorous, faintly +suspicious. With a little chuckle of joy she crawled through the +Barberry hedge and emerged for a single instant only at her full +height before three furry shapes came hurtling out of the darkness +and toppled her over backwards. + +"Stop, Beautiful-Lovely!" she gasped. "Stop, Lopsy! Behave yourself, +Blunder-Blot! _Sillies_! Don't you know I'm the lady that was talking +to you this morning through the picket fence? Don't you know I'm the +lady that fed you the box of cereal?--Oh dear--Oh dear--Oh dear," she +struggled. "I knew, of course, that there were three dogs--but who +ever in the world would have guessed that three could be so many?" + +As expeditiously as possible she picked herself up and bolted for the +house with two furry shapes leaping largely on either side of her and +one cold nose sniffing interrogatively at her heels. Her heart was +very light,--her pulses jumping with excitement,--an occasional furry +head doming into the palm of her hand warmed the whole bleak night +with its sense of mute companionship. But the back of her heels felt +certainly very queer. Even the warm yellow lights of the Rattle-Pane +House did not altogether dispel her uneasiness. + +"Maybe I'd better not plan to make my call so--so very informal," she +decided suddenly. "Not at a house where there are quite so many dogs! +Not at a house where there is a butler ... anyway!" + +Crowding and pushing and yelping and fawning around her, it was the +dogs who announced her ultimate arrival. Like a drift of snow the huge +wolf-hound whirled his white shagginess into the vestibule. Shrill as +a banging blind the impetuous coach-dog lurched his sleek weight +against the door. Sucking at a crack of light the red setter's kindled +nose glowed and snorted with dragonlike ferocity. Without knock or +ring the door-handle creaked and turned, three ecstatic shapes went +hurtling through a yellow glare into the hall beyond, and Flame found +herself staring up into the blinking, astonished eyes of the crumpled +old man with the red waistcoat. + +"G--Good evening,--Butler!" she rallied. + +"Good evening, Miss!" stammered the Butler. + +"I've--I've come to call," confided Flame. + +"To--call?" stammered the Butler. + +"Yes," conceded Flame. "I--I don't happen to have an engraved card +with me." Before the continued imperturbability of the old Butler all +subterfuge seemed suddenly quite useless. "I _never_ have had an +engraved card," she confided quite abruptly. "But you might tell Miss +Flora if you please--" ... Would nothing crack the Butler's +imperturbability?... Well maybe she could prove just a little bit +imperturbable herself! "Oh! Butlers don't 'tell' people things, do +they?... They always 'announce' things, don't they?... Well, kindly +announce to Miss Flora that the--the Minister's Daughter is--at the +door!... Oh, _no_! It isn't asking for a subscription or anything!" +she hastened quite suddenly to explain. "It's just a Christian +call!... B--Being so nervous and lost on the train and everything ... +we thought Miss Flora might be glad to know that there were +neighbors.... We live so near and everything.... And can run like the +wind! Oh, not Mother, of course!... She's a bit stout! And Father +starts all right but usually gets thinking of something else! But +I...? Kindly announce to Miss Flora," she repeated with palpable +crispness, "that the Minister's Daughter is at the door!" + +Fixedly old, fixedly crumpled, fixedly imperturbable, the Butler +stepped back a single jerky pace and bowed her towards the parlor. + +"Now," thrilled Flame, "the adventure really begins." + +It certainly was a sad and romantic looking parlor, and strangely +furnished, Flame thought, for even "moving times." Through a maze of +bulging packing boxes and barrels she picked her way to a faded +rose-colored chair that flanked the fire-place. That the chair was +already half occupied by a pile of ancient books and four dusty garden +trowels only served to intensify the general air of gloom. Presiding +over all, two dreadful bouquets of long-dead grasses flared wanly on +the mantle-piece. And from the tattered old landscape paper on the +walls Civil War heroes stared regretfully down through pale and +tarnished frames. + +"Dear me ... dear me," shivered Flame. "They're not going to Christmas +at all ... evidently! Not a sprig of holly anywhere! Not a ravel of +tinsel! Not a jingle bell!... Oh she must have lost a lot of lovers," +thrilled Flame. "I can bring her flowers, anyway! My very first Paper +White Narcissus! My--." + +With a scrape of the foot the Butler made known his return. + +"Miss Flora!" he announced. + +With a catch of her breath Flame jumped to her feet and turned to +greet the biggest, ugliest, most brindled, most wizened Bull Dog she +had ever seen in her life. + +"_Miss Flora!_" repeated the old Butler succinctly. + +"Miss Flora?" gasped Flame. "Why.... Why, I thought Miss Flora was a +Lady! Why--" + +"Miss Flora is indeed a very grand lady, Miss!" affirmed the Butler +without a flicker of expression. "Of a pedigree so famous ... so +distinguished ... so ..." Numerically on his fingers he began to count +the distinctions. "Five prizes this year! And three last! Do you mind +the chop?" he gloated. "The breadth! The depth!... Did you never hear +of alauntes?" he demanded. "Them bull-baiting dogs that was invented +by the second Duke of York or thereabouts in the year 1406?" + +"Oh my Glory!" thrilled Flame. "Is Miss Flora as old as _that_?" + +"Miss Flora," said the old Butler with some dignity, "is young--hardly +two in fact--so young that she seems to me but just weaned." + +With her great eyes goggled to a particularly disconcerting sort of +scrutiny Miss Flora sprang suddenly forward to investigate the +visitor. + +As though by a preconcerted signal a chair crashed over in the hall +and the wolf hound and the setter and the coach dog came hurtling back +in a furiously cordial onslaught. With wags and growls and yelps of +joy all four dogs met in Flame's lap. + +"They seem to like me, don't they?" triumphed Flame. Intermittently +through the melee of flapping ears,--shoving shoulders,--waving paws, +her beaming little face proved the absolute sincerity of that triumph. +"Mother's never let me have any dogs," she confided. "Mother thinks +they're not--Oh, of course, I realize that four dogs is a--a good +many," she hastened diplomatically to concede to a certain sudden +droop around the old Butler's mouth corners. + +From his slow, stooping poke of the sulky fire the old Butler glanced +up with a certain plaintive intentness. + +"All dogs is too many," he affirmed. + +"Come Christmas time I wishes I was dead." + +"Wish you were dead ... at Christmas Time?" cried Flame. Acute shock +was in her protest. + +"It's the feedin'," sighed the old Butler. "It ain't that I mind +eatin' with them on All Saints' Day or Fourth of July or even Sundays. +But come Christmas Time it seems like I craves to eat with More +Humans.... I got a nephew less'n twenty miles away. He's got cider in +his cellar. And plum puddings. His woman she raises guinea chickens. +And mince pies there is. And tasty gravies.--But me I mixes dog bread +and milk--dog bread and milk--till I can't see nothing--think nothing +but mush. And him with cider in his cellar!... It ain't as though Mr. +Delcote ever came himself to prove anything," he argued. "Not he! Not +Christmas Time! It's travelling he is.... He's had ... misfortunes," +he confided darkly. "He travels for 'em same as some folks travels for +their healths. Most especially at Christmas Time he travels for his +misfortunes! He ..." + +"_Mr. Delcote_?" quickened Flame. "Mr. Delcote?" (Now at last was the +mysterious tenancy about to be divulged?) + +"All he says," persisted the old Butler. "All he says is 'Now +Barret,'--that's me, 'Now Barret I trust your honor to see that the +dogs ain't neglected just because it's Christmas. There ain't no +reason, Barret', he says, 'why innocent dogs should suffer Christmas +just because everybody else does. They ain't done nothing.... It won't +do now Barret', he says, 'for you to give 'em their dinner at dawn +when they ain't accustomed to it, and a pail of water, and shut 'em up +while you go off for the day with any barrel of cider. You know what +dogs is, Barret', he says. 'And what they isn't. They've got to be fed +regular', he says, 'and with discipline. Else there's deaths.--Some +natural. Some unnatural. And some just plain spectacular from +furniture falling on their arguments. So if there's any fatalities +come this Christmas Time, Barret', he says, 'or any undue gains in +weight or losses in weight, I shall infer, Barret', he says, 'that you +was absent without leave.' ... It don't look like a very wholesome +Christmas for me," sighed the old Butler. "Not either way. Not what +you'd call wholesome." + +"But this Mr. Delcote?" puzzled Flame. "What a perfectly horrid man +he must be to give such heavenly dogs nothing but dog-bread and milk +for their Christmas dinner!... Is he young? Is he old? Is he thin? Is +he fat? However in the world did he happen to come to a queer, +battered old place like the Rattle-Pane House? But once come why +didn't he stay? And--And--And--?" + +"Yes'm," sighed the old Butler. + +In a ferment of curiosity, Flame edged jerkily forward, and subsided +as jerkily again. + +"Oh, if this only was a Parish Call," she deprecated, "I could ask +questions right out loud. 'How? Where? Why? When?' ... But being just +a social call--I suppose--I suppose...?" Appealingly her eager eyes +searched the old Butler's inscrutable face. + +"Yes'm," repeated the old Butler dully. Through the quavering fingers +that he swept suddenly across his brow two very genuine tears +glistened. + +With characteristic precipitousness Flame jumped to her feet. + +"Oh, darn Mr. Delcote!" she cried. "I'll feed your dogs, Christmas +Day! It won't take a minute after my own dinner or before! I'll run +like the wind! No one need ever know!" + +So it was that when Flame arrived at her own home fifteen minutes +later, and found her parents madly engaged in packing suit-cases, +searching time-tables, and rushing generally to and fro from attic to +cellar, no very mutual exchange of confidences ensued. + +"It's your Uncle Wally!" panted her Mother. + +"Another shock!" confided her Father. + +"Not such a bad one, either," explained her Mother. "But of course +we'll have to go! The very first thing in the morning! Christmas Day, +too! And leave you all alone! It's a perfect shame! But I've planned +it all out for everybody! Father's Lay Reader, of course, will take +the Christmas service! We'll just have to omit the Christmas Tree +surprise for the children!... It's lucky we didn't even unpack the +trimmings! Or tell a soul about it." In a hectic effort to pack both a +thick coat and a thin coat and a thick dress and a thin dress and +thick boots and thin boots in the same suit-case she began very +palpably to pant again. "Yes! Every detail is all planned out!" she +asserted with a breathy sort of pride. "You and your Father are both +so flighty I don't know whatever in the world you'd do if I didn't +plan out everything for you!" + +With more manners than efficiency Flame and her Father dropped at once +every helpful thing they were doing and sat down in rocking chairs to +listen to the plan. + +"Flame, of course, can't stay here all alone. Flame's Mother turned +and confided _sotto voce_ to her husband. Young men might call. The +Lay Reader is almost sure to call.... He's a dear delightful soul of +course, but I'm afraid he has an amorous eye." + +"All Lay Readers have amorous eyes," reflected her husband. "Taken all +in all it is a great asset." + +"Don't be flippant!" admonished Flame's Mother. "There are reasons ... +why I prefer that Flame's first offer of marriage should not be from +a Lay Reader." + +"Why?" brightened Flame. + +"S--sh--," cautioned her Father. + +"Very good reasons," repeated her Mother. From the conglomerate +packing under her hand a puff of spilled tooth-powder whiffed +fragrantly into the air. + +"Yes?" prodded her husband's blandly impatient voice. + +"Flame shall go to her Aunt Minna's" announced the dominant maternal +voice. "By driving with us to the station, she'll have only two hours +to wait for her train, and that will save one bus fare! Aunt Minna is +a vegetarian and doesn't believe in sweets either, so that will be +quite a unique and profitable experience for Flame to add to her +general culinary education! It's a wonderful house!... A bit dark of +course! But if the day should prove at all bright,--not so bright of +course that Aunt Minna wouldn't be willing to have the shades up, +but--Oh and Flame," she admonished still breathlessly, "I think you'd +better be careful to wear one of your rather longish skirts! And oh do +be sure to wipe your feet every time you come in! And don't chatter! +Whatever you do, don't chatter! Your Aunt Minna, you know, is just a +little bit peculiar! But such a worthy woman! So methodical! So...." + +To Flame's inner vision appeared quite suddenly the pale, inscrutable +face of the old Butler who asked nothing,--answered nothing,--welcomed +nothing,--evaded nothing. + +"... Yes'm," said Flame. + +But it was a very frankly disconsolate little girl who stole late that +night to her Father's study, and perched herself high on the arm of +his chair with her cheek snuggled close to his. + +"Of Father-Funny," whispered Flame, "I've got such a queer little +pain." + +"A pain?" jerked her Father. "Oh dear me! Where is it? Go and find +your Mother at once!" + +"Mother?" frowned Flame. "Oh it isn't that kind of a pain.--It's in my +Christmas. I've got such a sad little pain in my Christmas." + +"Oh dear me--dear me!" sighed her Father. Like two people most +precipitously smitten with shyness they sat for a moment staring +blankly around the room at every conceivable object except each +other. Then quite suddenly they looked back at each other and smiled. + +"Father," said Flame. "You're not of course a very old man.... But +still you are pretty old, aren't you? You've seen a whole lot of +Christmasses, I mean?" + +"Yes," conceded her Father. + +From the great clumsy rolling collar of her blanket wrapper Flame's +little face loomed suddenly very pink and earnest. + +"But Father," urged Flame. "Did you ever in your whole life spend a +Christmas just exactly the way you wanted to? Honest-to-Santa Claus +now,--did you _ever_?" + +"Why--Why, no," admitted her Father after a second's hesitation. "Why +no, I don't believe I ever did." Quite frankly between his brows there +puckered a very black frown. "Now take to-morrow, for instance," he +complained. "I had planned to go fishing through the ice.... After the +morning service, of course,--after we'd had our Christmas dinner,--and +gotten tired of our presents,--every intention in the world I had of +going fishing through the ice.... And now your Uncle Wally has to go +and have a shock! I don't believe it was necessary. He should have +taken extra precautions. The least that delicate relatives can do is +to take extra precautions at holiday time.... Oh, of course your Uncle +Wally has books in his library," he brightened, "very interesting old +books that wouldn't be perfectly seemly for a minister of the Gospel +to have in his own library.... But still it's very disappointing," he +wilted again. + +"I agree with you ... utterly, Father-Funny!" said Flame. "But ... +Father," she persisted, "Of all the people you know in the +world,--millions would it be?" + +"No, call it thousands" corrected her Father. + +"Well, thousands," accepted Flame. "Old people, young people, fat +people, skinnys, cross people, jolly people?... Did you ever in your +life know _any one_ who had ever spent Christmas just the way he +wanted to?" + +"Why ... no, I don't know that I ever did," considered her Father. +With his elbows on the arms of his chair, his slender fingers forked +to a lovely Gothic arch above the bridge of his nose, he yielded +himself instantly to the reflection. "Why ... no, ... I don't know +that I ever did," he repeated with an increasing air of +conviction.... "When you're young enough to enjoy the day as a +'holler' day there's usually some blighting person who prefers to have +it observed as a holy day.... And by the time you reach an age where +you really rather appreciate its being a holy day the chances are that +you've got a houseful of racketty youngsters who fairly insist on +reverting to the 'holler' day idea again." + +"U--m--m," encouraged Flame. + +--"When you're little, of course," mused her Father, "you have to +spend the day the way your elders want you to!... You crave a +Christmas Tree but they prefer stockings! You yearn to skate but they +consider the weather better for corn-popping! You ask for a bicycle +but they had already found a very nice bargain in flannels! You beg to +dine the gay-kerchiefed Scissor-Grinder's child, but they invite the +Minister's toothless mother-in-law!... And when you're old enough to +go courting," he sighed, "your lady-love's sentiments are outraged if +you don't spend the day with her and your own family are perfectly +furious if you don't spend the day with them!... And after you're +married?" With a gesture of ultimate despair he sank back into his +cushions. "N--o, no one, I suppose, in the whole world, has ever spent +Christmas just exactly the way he wanted to!" + +"Well, I," triumphed Flame, "have got a chance to spend Christmas just +exactly the way I want to!... The one chance perhaps in a life-time, +it would seem!... No heart aches involved, no hurt feelings, no +disappointments for anybody! Nobody left out! Nobody dragged in! Why +Father-Funny," she cried. "It's an experience that might distinguish +me all my life long! Even when I'm very old and crumpled people would +point me out on the street and say '_There's_ some one who once spent +Christmas just exactly the way she wanted to'!" To a limpness almost +unbelievable the eager little figure wilted down within its +blanket-wrapper swathings. "And now ..." deprecated Flame, "Mother has +gone and wished me on Aunt Minna instead!" With a sudden revival of +enthusiasm two small hands crept out of their big cuffs and clutched +her Father by the ears. "Oh Father-Funny!" pleaded Flame. "If you were +too old to want it for a 'holler' day and not quite old enough to +need it for a holy day ... so that all you asked in the world was just +to have it a _holly_ day! Something all bright! Red and green! And +tinsel! and jingle-bells!... How would you like to have Aunt Minna +wished on you?... It isn't you know as though Aunt Minna was a--a +pleasant person," she argued with perfectly indisputable logic. "You +couldn't wish one 'A Merry Aunt Minna' any more than you could wish +'em a 'Merry Good Friday'!" From the clutch on his ears the small +hands crept to a point at the back of his neck where they encompassed +him suddenly in a crunching hug. "Oh Father-Funny!" implored Flame, +"You were a Lay Reader once! You must have had _very_ amorous eyes! +Couldn't you _please_ persuade Mother that..." + +With a crisp flutter of skirts Flame's Mother, herself, appeared +abruptly in the door. Her manner was very excited. + +"Why wherever in the world have you people been?" she cried. "Are you +stone deaf? Didn't you hear the telephone? Couldn't you even hear me +calling? Your Uncle Wally is worse! That is he's better but he thinks +he's worse! And they want us to come at once! It's something about a +new will! The Lawyer telephoned! He advises us to come at once! +They've sent an automobile for us! It will be here any minute!... But +whatever in the world shall we do about Flame?" she cried +distractedly. "You know how Uncle Wally feels about having young +people in the house! And she can't possibly go to Aunt Minna's till +to-morrow! And...." + +"But you see I'm not going to Aunt Minna's!" announced Flame quite +serenely. Slipping down from her Father's lap she stood with a round, +roly-poly flannel sort of dignity confronting both her parents. +"Father says I don't have to!" + +"Why, Flame!" protested her Father. + +"No, of course, you didn't say it with your mouth," admitted Flame. +"But you said it with your skin and bones!--I could feel it working." + +"Not go to your Aunt Minna's?" gasped her Mother. "What do you want to +do?... Stay at home and spend Christmas with the Lay Reader?" + +"When you and Father talk like that," murmured Flame with some +hauteur, "I don't know whether you're trying to run him down ... or +run him up." + +"Well, how do you feel about him yourself?" veered her Father quite +irrelevantly. + +"Oh, I like him--some," conceded Flame. In her bright cheeks suddenly +an even brighter color glowed. "I like him when he leaves out the +Litany," she said. "I've told him I like him when he leaves out the +Litany.--He's leaving it out more and more I notice.--Yes, I like him +very much." + +"But this Aunt Minna business," veered back her Father suddenly. "What +_do_ you want to do? That's just the question. What _do_ you want to +do?" + +"Yes, what do you want to do?" panted her Mother. + +"I want to make a Christmas for myself!" said Flame. "Oh, of course, I +know perfectly well," she agreed, "that I could go to a dozen places +in the Parish and be cry-babied over for my presumable loneliness. And +probably I _should_ cry a little," she wavered, "towards the +dessert--when the plum pudding came in and it wasn't like +Mother's.--But if I made a Christmas of my own--" she rallied +instantly. "Everything about it would be brand-new and unassociated! I +tell you I _want_ to make a Christmas of my own! It's the chance of a +life-time! Even Father sees that it's the chance of a life-time!" + +"Do you?" demanded his wife a bit pointedly. + +"_Honk-honk!_" screamed the motor at the door. + +"Oh, dear me, whatever in the world shall I do?" cried Flame's Mother. +"I'm almost distracted! I'm--" + +"When in Doubt do as the Doubters do," suggested Flame's Father quite +genially. "Choose the most doubtful doubt on the docket and--Flame's got +a pretty level head," he interrupted himself very characteristically. + +"No young girl has a level heart," asserted Flame's Mother. "I'm so +worried about the Lay Reader." + +"Lay Reader?" murmured her Father. Already he had crossed the +threshold into the hall and was rummaging through an over-loaded hat +rack for his fur coat. "Why, yes," he called back, "I quite forgot to +ask. Just what kind of a Christmas is it, Flame, that you want to +make?" With unprecedented accuracy he turned at the moment to force +his wife's arms into the sleeves of her own fur coat. + +Twice Flame rolled up her cuffs and rolled them down again before she +answered. + +"I--I want to make a Surprise for Miss Flora," she confided. + +"_Honk-honk!_" urged the automobile. + +"For Miss Flora?" gasped her Mother. + +"Miss Flora?" echoed her Father. + +"Why, at the Rattle-Pane House, you know!" rallied Flame. "Don't you +remember that I called there this afternoon? It--it looked rather +lonely there.--I--think I could fix it." + +"Honk-honk-honk!" implored the automobile. + +"But who _is_ this Miss Flora?" cried her Mother. "I never heard +anything so ridiculous in my life! How do we know she's respectable?" + +"Oh, my dear," deprecated Flame's Father. "Just as though the owners +of the Rattle-Pane House would rent it to any one who wasn't +respectable!" + +"Oh, she's _very_ respectable," insisted Flame. "Of a lineage so +distinguished--" + +"How old might this paragon be?" queried her Father. + +"Old?" puzzled Flame. To her startled mind two answers only presented +themselves.... Should she say "Oh, she's only just weaned," or +"Well,--she was invented about 1406?" Between these two dilemmas a +single compromise suggested itself. "She's _awfully_ wrinkled," said +Flame; "that is--her face is. All wizened up, I mean." + +"Oh, then of course she _must_ be respectable," twinkled Flame's +Father. + +"And is related in some way," persisted Flame, "to Edward the +2nd--Duke of York." + +"Of that guarantee of respectability I am, of course, not quite so +sure," said her Father. + +With a temperish stamping of feet, an infuriate yank of the door-bell, +Uncle Wally's chauffeur announced that the limit of his endurance had +been reached. + +Blankly Flame's Mother stared at Flame's Father. Blankly Flame's +Father returned the stare. + +"Oh, _p-l-e-a-s-e_!" implored Flame. Her face was crinkled like fine +crêpe. + +"Smooth out your nose!" ordered her Mother. On the verge of +capitulation the same familiar fear assailed her. "Will you promise +not to see the Lay Reader?" she bargained. + +"--Yes'm," said Flame. + + + + +PART II + + +It's a dull person who doesn't wake up Christmas Morning with a +curiously ticklish sense of Tinsel in the pit of his stomach!--A sort +of a Shine! A kind of a Pain! + + "Glisten and Tears, + Pang of the years." + +That's Christmas! + +So much was born on Christmas Day! So much has died! So much is yet to +come! Balsam-Scented, with the pulse of bells, how the senses sing! +Memories that wouldn't have batted an eye for all the Gabriel Trumpets in +Eternity leaping to life at the sound of a twopenny horn! Merry Folk who +were with us once and are no more! Dream Folk who have never been with us +yet but will be some time! Ache of old carols! Zest of new-fangled games! +Flavor of puddings! Shine of silver and glass! The pleasant frosty smell of +the Express-man! The Gift Beautiful! The Gift Dutiful! The Gift that Didn't +Come! _Heigho_! Manger and Toy-Shop,--Miracle and Mirth,-- + + "Glisten and Tears, + LAUGH at the years!" + +_That's_ Christmas! + +Flame Nourice certainly was willing to laugh at the years. Eighteen +usually is! + +Waking at Dawn two single thoughts consumed her,--the Lay Reader, and +the humpiest of the express packages downstairs. + +The Lay Reader's name was Bertrand. "Bertrand the Lay Reader," Flame +always called him. The rest of the Parish called him Mr. Laurello. + +It was the thought of Bertrand the Lay Reader that made Flame laugh +the most. + +"As long as I've promised most faithfully not to see him," she +laughed, "how can I possibly go to church? For the first Christmas in +my life," she laughed, "I won't have to go to church!" + +With this obligation so cheerfully canceled, the exploration of the +humpiest express package loomed definitely as the next task on the +horizon. + +Hoping for a fur coat from her Father, fearing for a set of +encyclopedias from her Mother, she tore back the wrappings with eager +hands only to find,--all-astonished, and half a-scream,--a gay, gauzy +layer of animal masks nosing interrogatively up at her. Less practical +surely than the fur coat,--more amusing, certainly, than +encyclopedias,--the funny "false faces" grinned up at her with a +curiously excitative audacity. Where from?--No identifying card! What +for? No conceivable clew!--Unless perhaps just on general principles a +donation for the Sunday School Christmas Tree?--But there wasn't going +to be any tree! Tentatively she reached into the box and touched the +fiercely striped face of a tiger, the fantastically exaggerated beak +of a red and green parrot. "U-m-m-m," mused Flame. "Whatever in the +world shall I do with them?" Then quite abruptly she sank back on her +heels and began to laugh and laugh and laugh. Even the Lay Reader had +not received such a laughing But even to herself she did not say just +what she was laughing at. It was a time for deeds, it would seem, and +not for words. + +Certainly the morning was very full of deeds! + +There was, of course, a present from her Mother to be opened,--warm, +woolly stockings and things like that. But no one was ever swerved +from an original purpose by trying on warm, woolly stockings. And from +her Father there was the most absurd little box no bigger than your +nose marked, "For a week in New York," and stuffed to the brim with +the sweetest bright green dollar bills. But, of course, you couldn't +try those on. And half the Parish sent presents. But no Parish ever +sent presents that needed to be tried on. No gay, fluffy scarfs,--no +lacey, frivolous pettiskirts,--no bright delaying hat-ribbons! Just +books,--illustrated poems usually, very wholesome pickles,--and always +a huge motto to recommend, "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men."--To +"Men"?--Why not to Women?--Why not at least to "_Dogs_?" questioned +Flame quite abruptly. + +Taken all in all it was not a Christmas Morning of sentiment but a +Christmas morning of _works_! Kitchen works, mostly! Useful, flavorous +adventures with a turkey! A somewhat nervous sally with an apple pie! +Intermittently, of course, a few experiments with flour paste! A +flaire or two with a paint brush! An errand to the attic! Interminable +giggles! + +Surely it was four o'clock before she was even ready to start for the +Rattle-Pane House. And "starting" is by no means the same as arriving. +Dragging a sledful of miscellaneous Christmas goods an eighth of a +mile over bare ground is not an easy task. She had to make three +tugging trips. And each start was delayed by her big gray pussy cat +stealing out to try to follow her. And each arrival complicated by the +yelpings and leapings and general cavortings of four dogs who didn't +see any reason in the world why they shouldn't escape from their +forced imprisonment in the shed-yard and prance home with her. Even +with the third start and the third arrival finally accomplished, the +crafty cat stood waiting for her on the steps of the Rattle-Pane +House,--back arched, fur bristled, spitting like some new kind of +weather-cock at the storm in the shed-yard, and had to be thrust quite +unceremoniously into a much too small covered basket and lashed down +with yards and yards of tinsel that was needed quite definitely for +something else.--It isn't just the way of the Transgressor that's +hard.--Nobody's way is any too easy! + +The door-key, though, was exactly where the old Butler had said it +would be,--under the door mat, and the key itself turned astonishingly +cordially in the rusty old lock. Never in her whole little life having +owned a door-key to her own house it seemed quite an adventure in +itself to be walking thus possessively through an unfamiliar hall +into an absolutely unknown kitchen and goodness knew what on either +side and beyond. + +Perfectly simply too as the old Butler had promised, the four dog +dishes, heaping to the brim, loomed in prim line upon the kitchen +table waiting for distribution. + +"U-m-m," sniffed Flame. "Nothing but mush! _Mush_!--All over the world +to-day I suppose--while their masters are feasting at other people's +houses on puddings and--and cigarettes! How the poor darlings must +suffer! Locked in sheds! Tied in yards! Stuffed down cellar!" + +"Me-o-w," twinged a plaintive hint from the hallway just outside. + +"Oh, but cats are different," argued Flame. "So soft, so plushy, so +spineless! Cats were _meant_ to be stuffed into things." + +Without further parleying she doffed her red tam and sweater, donned a +huge white all-enveloping pinafore, and started to ameliorate as best +she could the Christmas sufferings of the "poor darlings" immediately +at hand. + +It was at least a yellow kitchen,--or had been once. In all that gray, +dank, neglected house, the one suggestion of old sunshine. + +"We shall have our dinner here," chuckled Flame. "After the carols--we +shall have our dinner here." + +Very boisterously in the yard just outside the window the four dogs +scuffled and raced for sheer excitement and joy at this most +unexpected advent of human companionship. Intermittently from time to +time by the aid of old boxes or barrels they clawed their way up to +the cobwebby window-sill to peer at the strange proceedings. +Intermittently from time to time they fell back into the frozen yard +in a chaos of fur and yelps. + +By five o'clock certainly the faded yellow kitchen must have looked +very strange, even to a dog! + +Straight down its dingy, wobbly-floored center stretched a long table +cheerfully spread with "the Rev. Mrs. Flamande Nourice's" second best +table cloth. Quaint high-backed chairs dragged in from the shadowy +parlor circled the table. A pleasant china plate gleamed like a +hand-painted moon before each chair. At one end of the table loomed a +big brown turkey; at the other, the appropriate vegetables. Pies, +cakes, and doughnuts, interspersed themselves between. Green wreaths +streaming with scarlet ribbons hung nonchalantly across every +chair-top. Tinsel garlands shone on the walls. In the doorway reared a +hastily constructed mimicry of a railroad crossing sign. + +[Illustration] + +Directly opposite and conspicuously placed above the rusty stove-pipe +stretched the Parish's Gift Motto--duly re-adjusted. + + "_Peace_ on _Earth_, Good Will to _Dogs_." + +"Fatuously silly," admitted Flame even to herself. "But yet it does +add something to the Gayety of Rations!" + +Stepping aside for a single thrilling moment to study the full effect +of her handiwork, the first psychological puzzle of her life smote +sharply across her senses. Namely, that you never really get the whole +fun out of anything unless you are absolutely alone.--But the very +first instant you find yourself absolutely alone with a +Really-Good-Time you begin to twist and turn and hunt about for +somebody Very Special to share it with you! + +The only "Very Special" person that Flame could think of was "Bertrand +the Lay Reader." + +All a-blush with the sheer mental surprise of it she fled to the shed +door to summon the dogs. + +"Maybe even the dogs won't come!" she reasoned hectically. "Maybe +nothing will come! Maybe that's always the way things happen when you +get your own way about something else!" + +Like a blast from the Arctic the Christmas twilight swept in on her. +It crisped her cheeks,--crinkled her hair! Turned her spine to a wisp +of tinsel! All outdoors seemed suddenly creaking with frost! All +indoors, with _unknownness_! + +"Come, Beautiful-Lovely!" she implored. "Come, Lopsy! Miss Flora! +Come, Blunder-Blot!'" + +But there was really no need of entreaty. A turn of the door-knob would +have brought them! Leaping, loping, four abreast, they came plunging +like so many North Winds to their party! Streak of Snow,--Glow of +Fire,--Frozen Mud--Sun-Spot!--Yelping-mouthed--slapping-tailed! Backs +bristling! Legs stiffening! Wolf Hound, Setter, Bull Dog, +Dalmatian,--each according to his kind, hurtling, crowding! + +"Oh, dear me, dear me," struggled Flame. "Maybe a carol would calm +them." + +To a certain extent a carol surely did. The hair-cloth parlor of the +Rattle-Pane House would have calmed anything. And the mousey smell of +the old piano fairly jerked the dogs to its senile old ivory keyboard. +Cocking their ears to its quavering treble notes,--snorting their +nostrils through its gritty guttural basses, they watched Flame's +facile fingers sweep from sound to sound. + +"Oh, what a--glorious lark!" quivered Flame. "What a--a _lonely_ +glorious lark!" + +Timidly at first but with an increasing abandon, half laughter and +half tears, the clear young soprano voice took up its playful +paraphrase, + + "God rest you merrie--animals! + Let nothing you dismay!" + +caroled Flame. + + "For--" + +It was just at this moment that Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf +Hound,--muzzled lifted, eyes rolling, jabbed his shrill nose into +space and harmony with a carol of his own,--octaves of agony,--Heaven +knows what of ecstasy,--that would have hurried an owl to its nest, a +ghoul to a moving picture show! + +"Wow-Wow--_Wow_!" caroled Beautiful-Lovely. +"Ww--ow--Ww--ow--_Ww--Oo--Wwwww_!" + +As Flame's hands dropped from the piano the unmistakable creak of red +wheels sounded on the frozen driveway just outside. + +No one but "Bertrand the Lay Reader" drove a buggy with red wheels! To +the infinite scandalization of the Parish--no one but "Bertrand the +Lay Reader" drove a buggy with red wheels!--Fleet steps sounded +suddenly on the path! Startled fists beat furiously on the door! + +"What is it? What is it?" shouted a familiar voice. "Whatever in the +world is happening? Is it _murder_? Let me in! _Let me in!_" + +"Sil--ly!" hissed Flame through a crack in the door. "It's nothing but +a party! Don't you know a--a party when you hear it?" + +For an instant only, blank silence greeted her confidence. Then +"Bertrand the Lay Reader" relaxed in an indisputably genuine gasp of +astonishment. + +"Why! Why, is that you, Miss Flame?" he gasped. "Why, I thought it was +a murder! Why--Why, whatever in the world are you doing here?" + +"I--I'm having a party," hissed Flame through the key-hole. + +"A--a--party?" stammered the Lay Reader. "Open the door!" + +"No, I--can't," said Flame. + +"Why not?" demanded the Lay Reader. + +Helplessly in the darkness of the vestibule Flame looked up,--and +down,--and sideways,--but met always in every direction the memory of +her promise. + +"I--I just can't," she admitted a bit weakly. "It wouldn't be +convenient.--I--I've got trouble with my eyes." + +"Trouble with your eyes?" questioned the Lay Reader. + +"I didn't go away with my Father and Mother," confided Flame. + +"No,--so I notice," observed the Lay Reader. "_Please_ open the door!" + +"Why?" parried Flame. + +"I've been looking for you everywhere," urged the Lay Reader. "At the +Senior Warden's! At all the Vestrymen's houses! Even at the Sexton's! +I knew you didn't go away! The Garage Man told me there were only +two!--I thought surely I'd find you at your own house.--But I only +found sled tracks." + +"That was me,--I," mumbled Flame. + +"And then I heard these awful screams," shuddered the Lay Reader. + +"That was a Carol," said Flame. + +"A Carol?" scoffed the Lay Reader. "Open the door!" + +"Well--just a crack," conceded Flame. + +It was astonishing how a man as broad-shouldered as the Lay Reader +could pass so easily through a crack. + +Conscience-stricken Flame fled before him with her elbow crooked +across her forehead. + +"Oh, my eyes! My eyes!" she cried. + +"Well, really," puzzled the Lay Reader. "Though I claim, of course, to +be ordinarily bright--I had never suspected myself of being actually +dazzling." + +"Oh, you're not bright at all," protested Flame. "It's just my +promise.--I promised Mother not to see you!" + +"Not to see _me_?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was astonishing how +almost instantaneously a man as purely theoretical as the Lay Reader +was supposed to be, thought of a perfectly practical solution to the +difficulty. "Why--why we might tie my big handkerchief across your +eyes," he suggested. "Just till we get this mystery straightened +out.--Surely there is nothing more or less than just plain +righteousness in--that!" + +"What a splendid idea!" capitulated Flame. "But, of course, if I'm +absolutely blindfolded," she wavered for a second only, "you'll have +to lead me by the hand." + +"I could do that," admitted the Lay Reader. + +With the big white handkerchief once tied firmly across her eyes, +Flame's last scruple vanished. + +"Well, you see," she began quite precipitously, "I _did_ think it +would be such fun to have a party!--A party all my own, I mean!--A +party just exactly as I wanted it! No Parish in it at all! Or good +works! Or anything! Just _fun_!--And as long as Mother and Father had +to go away anyway--" Even though the blinding bandage the young eyes +seemed to lift in a half wistful sort of appeal. "You see there's some +sort of property involved," she confided quite impulsively. "Uncle +Wally's making a new will. There's a corn-barn and a private chapel +and a collection of Chinese lanterns and a piebald pony principally +under dispute.--Mother, of course thinks we ought to have the +corn-barn. But Father can't decide between the Chinese lanterns and +the private chapel.--Personally," she sighed, "I'm hoping for the +piebald pony." + +"Yes, but this--party?" prodded the Lay Reader. + +"Oh, yes,--the party--" quickened Flame. + +"Why have it in a deserted house?" questioned the Lay Reader with some +incisiveness. + +Even with her eyes closely bandaged Flame could see perfectly clearly +that the Lay Reader was really quite troubled. + +"Oh, but you see it isn't exactly a deserted house," she explained. + +"Who lives here?" demanded the Lay Reader. + +"I don't know--exactly," admitted Flame. "But the Butler is a friend +of mine and--" + +"The--Butler is a friend of yours?" gasped the Lay Reader. Already, if +Flame could only have seen it, his head was cocked with sudden +intentness towards the parlor door. "There is certainly something very +strange about all this," he whispered a bit hectically. "I could +almost have sworn that I heard a faint scuffle,--the horrid sound of a +person--strangling." + +"Strangling?" giggled Flame. "Oh, that is just the sound of Miss +Flora's 'girlish glee'! If she'd only be content to chew the corner of +the piano cover! But when she insists on inhaling it, too!" + +"Miss Flora?" gasped the Lay Reader. "Is this a Mad House?" + +"Miss Flora is a--a dog," confided Flame a bit coolly. "I +neglected--it seems--to state that this is a dog-party that I'm +having." + +"_Dogs_?" winced the Lay Reader. "Will they bite?" + +"Only if you don't trust them," confided Flame. + +"But it's so hard to trust a dog that will bite you if you don't trust +him," frowned the Lay Reader. "It makes such a sort of a--a vicious +circle, as it were." + +"Vicious Circe?" mused Flame, a bit absent-mindedly. "No, I don't +think it's nice at all to call Miss Flora a 'Vicious Circe.'" It was +Flame's turn now to wince back a little. "I--I hate people who hate +dogs!" she cried out quite abruptly. + +"Oh, I don't hate them," lied the Lay Reader like a gentleman, "it's +only that--that--. You see a dog bit me once!" he confided with +significant emphasis. + +"I--bit a dentist--once," mused Flame without any emphasis at all. + +"Oh, but I say, Miss Flame," deprecated the Lay Reader. "That's +different! When a dog bites you, you know, there's always more or less +question whether he was mad or not." + +"There doesn't seem to have been any question at all," mused Flame, +"that _you_ were mad! Did you have _your_ head sent off to be +investigated or anything?" + +"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," implored the Lay Reader, "I tell you I _like_ +dogs,--good dogs! I assure you I'm very--oh, very much interested in +this dog party of yours! Such a quaint idea! So--so--! If I could be +of any possible assistance?" he implored. + +"Maybe you could be," relaxed Flame ever so faintly. "But if you're +really coming to my party," she stiffened again, "you've got to behave +like my party!" + +"Why, of course I'll behave like your party!" laughed the Lay Reader. + +"There _is_ a problem," admitted Flame. "Five problems, to be +perfectly accurate.--Four dogs, and a cat in the wood-shed." + +"And a cat in the wood-shed?" echoed the Lay Reader quite idiotically. + +"The table is set," affirmed Flame. "The places, all ready!--But I +don't know how to get the dogs into their chairs!--They run around so! +They yelp! They jump!--They haven't had a mouthful to eat, you see, +since last night, this time!--And when they once see the turkey +I'm--I'm afraid they'll stampede it." + +"Turkey?" quizzed the Lay Reader who had dined that day on corned +beef. + +"Oh, of course, mush was what they were intended to have," admitted +Flame. "Piles and piles of mush! Extra piles and piles of mush I +should judge because it was Christmas Day!... But don't you think mush +does seem a bit dull?" she questioned appealingly. "For Christmas +Day? Oh, I did think a turkey would taste so good!" + +"It certainly would," conceded the Lay Reader. + +"So if you'd help me--" wheedled Flame, "it would be well-worth +staying blindfolded for.... For, of course, I shall have to stay +blindfolded. But I can see a little of the floor," she admitted, +"though I couldn't of course break my promise to my Mother by seeing +you." + +"No, certainly not," admitted the Lay Reader. + +"Otherwise--" murmured Flame with a faint gesture towards the door. + +"I will help you," said the Lay Reader. + +"Where is your hand?" fumbled Flame. + +"_Here_!" attested the Lay Reader. + +"Lead us to the dogs!" commanded Flame. + +Now the Captain of a ship feels genuinely obligated, it would seem, to +go down with his ship if tragic circumstances so insist. But he +never,--so far as I've ever heard, felt the slightest obligation +whatsoever to go down with another captain's ship,--to be martyred in +short for any job not distinctly his own. So Bertrand Lorello,--who +for the cause he served, wouldn't have hesitated an instant probably, +to be torn by Hindoo lions,--devoured by South Sea cannibals,--fallen +upon by a chapel spire,--trampled to death even at a church rummage +sale,--saw no conceivable reason at the moment for being eaten by dogs +at a purely social function. + +Even groping through a balsam-scented darkness with one hand clasping +the thrilly fingers of a lovely young girl, this distaste did not +altogether leave him. + +"This--this mush that you speak of?" he questioned quite abruptly. +"With the dogs as--as nervous as you say,--so unfortunately liable to +stampede? Don't you think that perhaps a little mush served first,--a +good deal of mush I would say, served first,--might act as a--as a +sort of anesthetic?... Somewhere in the past I am almost sure I have +read that mush in sufficient quantities, you understand, is really +quite a--quite an anesthetic." + +Very palpably in the darkness he heard a single throaty swallow. + +"Lead us to the--mush," said Flame. + +In another instant the door-knob turned in his hand, and the cheerful +kitchen lamp-light,--glitter of tinsel,--flare of red ribbons,--savor +of foods, smote sharply on him. + +"Oh, I say, how _jolly_!" cried the Lay Reader. + +"Don't let me bump into anything!" begged the blindfolded Flame, still +holding tight to his hand. + +"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," kindled the entranced Lay Reader, "it's _you_ +that look the jolliest! All in white that way! I've never seen you +wear _that_ to church, have I?" + +"This is a pinafore," confided Flame coolly. "A bungalow apron, the +fashion papers call it.... No, you've never seen me wear--this to +church." + +"O--h," said the Lay Reader. + +"Get the mush," said Flame. + +"The what?" asked the Lay Reader. + +"It's there on the table by the window," gestured Flame. "Please set +all four dishes on the floor,--each dish, of course, in a separate +corner," ordered Flame. "There is a reason.... And then open the +parlor door." + +"Open the parlor door?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was no mere +grammatical form of speech but a real query in the Lay Reader's mind. + +"Well, maybe I'd better," conceded Flame. "Lead me to it." + +Roused into frenzy by the sound of a stranger's step, a stranger's +voice, the four dogs fumed and seethed on the other side of the panel. + +"Sniff--Sniff--_Snort_!" the Red Setter sucked at the crack in the +door. + +"Woof! Woof! _Woof_!" roared the big Wolf Hound. + +"Slam! Bang! Slash!" slapped the Dalmatian's crisp weight. + +"Yi! Yi! Yi!" sang the Bull Dog. + +"Hush! _Hush_, Dogs!" implored Flame. "This is Father's Lay Reader!" + +"Your--Lay Reader!" contradicted the young man gallantly. It _was_ +pretty gallant of him, wasn't it? Considering everything? + +In another instant four _shapes_ with teeth in them came hurtling +through! + +If Flame had never in her life admired the Lay Reader she certainly +would have admired him now for the sheer cold-blooded foresight which +had presaged the inevitable reaction of the dogs upon the mush and the +mush upon the dogs. With a single sniff at his heels, a prod of paws +in his stomach, the onslaught swerved--and passed. Guzzlingly from +four separate corners of the room issued sounds of joy and +fulfillment. + +With an impulse quite surprising even to herself Flame thrust both +hands into the Lay Reader's clasp. + +"You _are_ nice, aren't you?" she quickened. In an instant of weakness +one hand crept up to the blinding bandage, and recovered its honor as +instantly. "Oh, I do wish I _could_ see you," sighed Flame. "You're so +good-looking! Even Mother thinks you're _so_ good-looking!... Though +she does get awfully worked up, of course, about your 'amorous eyes'!" + +"Does your Mother think I've got ... 'amorous eyes'?" asked the Lay +Reader a bit tersely. Behind his spectacles as he spoke the orbs in +question softened and glowed like some rare exotic bloom under glass. +"Does your Mother ... think I've got amorous eyes?" + +"Oh, yes!" said Flame. + +"And your Father?" drawled the Lay Reader. + +"Why, Father says _of course_ you've got 'amorous eyes'!" confided +Flame with the faintest possible tinge of surprise at even being asked +such a question. "That's the funny thing about Mother and Father," +chuckled Flame. "They're always saying the same thing and meaning +something entirely different by it. Why, when Mother says with her +mouth all pursed up, 'I have every reason to believe that Mr. Lorello +is engaged to the daughter of the Rector in his former Parish,' Father +just puts back his head and howls, and says, 'Why, _of course_, Mr. +Lorello is engaged to the daughter of the Rector in his former Parish! +All Lay Readers...." + +In the sudden hush that ensued a faint sense of uneasiness flickered +through Flame's shoulders. + +"Is it you that have hushed? Or the dogs?" she asked. + +"The dogs," said the Lay Reader. + +Very cautiously, absolutely honorably, Flame turned her back to the +Lay Reader, and lifted the bandage just far enough to prove the Lay +Reader's assertion. + +Bulging with mush the four dogs lay at rest on rounding sides with +limp legs straggling, or crouched like lions' heads on paws, with +limpid eyes blinking above yawny mouths. + +"O--h," crooned Flame. "How sweet! Only, of course, with what's to +follow," she regretted thriftily, "it's an awful waste of mush.... +Excelsior warmed in the oven would have served just as well." + +At the threat of a shadow across her eyeball she jerked the bandage +back into place. + +"Now, Mr. Lorello," she suggested blithely, "if you'll get the +Bibles...." + +"Bibles?" stiffened the Lay Reader. "Bibles? Why, really, Miss Flame, +I couldn't countenance any sort of mock service! Even just for--for +quaintness,--even for Christmas quaintness!" + +"Mock service?" puzzled Flame. "Bibles?... Oh, I don't want you to +preach out of 'em," she hastened perfectly amiably to explain. "All I +want them for is to plump-up the chairs.... The seats you see are too +low for the dogs.... Oh, I suppose dictionaries would do," she +compromised reluctantly. "Only dictionaries are always so scarce." + +Obediently the Lay Reader raked the parlor book-cases for +"plump-upable" books. With real dexterity he built Chemistries on +Sermons and Ancient Poems on Cook Books till the desired heights were +reached. + +For a single minute more Flame took another peep at the table. + +"Set a chair for yourself directly opposite me!" she ordered. For +sheer hilarious satisfaction her feet began to dance and her hands to +clap. "And whenever I really feel obliged to look," she sparkled, +"you'll just have to leave the table, that's all!... And now...?" +Appraisingly her muffled eye swept the shining vista. "Perfect!" she +triumphed. "Perfect!" Then quite abruptly the eager mouth wilted. +"Why ... Why I've forgotten the carving knife and fork!" she cried out +in real distress. "Oh, how stupid of me!" Arduously, but without +avail, she searched through all the drawers and cupboards of the +Rattle-Pane kitchen. A single alternative occurred to her. "You'll +have to go over to my house and get them,--Mr. Lorello!" she said. +"Were you ever in my kitchen? Or my pantry?" + +"No," admitted the Lay Reader. + +"Well, you'll have to climb in through the window--someway," worried +Flame. "I've mislaid my key somewhere here among all these dishes and +boxes. And the pantry," she explained very explicitly, "is the third +door on the right as you enter.... You'll see a chest of drawers. +Open the second of 'em.... Or maybe you'd better look through all of +them.... Only please ... please hurry!" Imploringly the little head +lifted. + +"If I hurry enough," said the Lay Reader quite impulsively, "may I +have a kiss when I get back?" + +"A kiss?" hooted Flame. In the curve of her cheek a dimple opened +suddenly. "Well ... maybe," said Flame. + +As though the word were wings the Lay Reader snatched his hat and sped +out into the night. + +It was astonishing how all the warm housey air seemed to rush out with +him, and all the shivery frost rush back. + +A little bit listlessly Flame dragged down the bandage from her eyes. + +"It must be the creaks on the stairs that make it so awfully lonely +all of a sudden," argued Flame. "It must be because the dogs snore +so.... No mere man could make it so empty." With a precipitous nudge +of the memory she dashed to the door and helloed to the fast +retreating figure. "Oh, Bertrand! Bertrand!" she called, "I got sort +of mixed up. It's the second door on the left! And if you don't find +'em there you'd better go up in Mother's room and turn out the silver +chest! _Hurry_!" + +Rallying back to the bright Christmas kitchen for the real business at +hand, an accusing blush rose to the young spot where the dimple had +been. + +"Oh, Shucks!" parried Flame. "I kissed a Bishop before I was +five!--What's a Lay Reader?" As one humanely willing to condone the +future as well as the past she rolled up her white sleeves without +further introspection, and dragged out from the protecting shadow of +the sink the "humpiest box" which had so excited her emotions at home +in an earlier hour of the day. Cracklingly under her eager fingers the +clumsy cover slid off, exposing once more to her enraptured gaze the +gay-colored muslin layer of animal masks leering fatuously up at her. + +Only with her hand across her mouth did she keep from crying out. Very +swiftly her glance traveled from the grinning muslin faces before her +to the solemn fur faces on the other side of the room. The hand across +her mouth tightened. + +"Why, it's something like Creation," she giggled. "This having to +decide which face to give to which animal!" + +As expeditiously as possible she made her selection. + +"Poor Miss Flora must be so tired of being so plain," she thought. +"I'll give her the first choice of everything! Something really +lovely! It can't help resting her!" + +With this kind idea in mind she selected for Miss Flora a canary's +face.--Softly yellow! Bland as treacle! Its swelling, tender muslin +throat fairly reeking with the suggestion of innocent song! No one +gazing once upon such ornithological purity would ever speak a harsh +word again, even to a sparrow! + +Nudging Miss Flora cautiously from her sonorous nap, Flame beguiled +her with half a doughnut to her appointed chair, boosted her still +cautiously to her pinnacle of books, and with various swift +adjustments of fasteners, knotting of tie-strings,--an extra breathing +hole jabbed through the beak, slipped the canary's beautiful blond +countenance over Miss Flora's frankly grizzled mug. + +For a single terrifying instant Miss Flora's crinkled sides +tightened,--a snarl like ripped silk slipped through her straining +lungs. Then once convinced that the mask was not a gas-box she +accepted the liberty with reasonable _sang-froid_ and sat blinking +beadily out through the canary's yellow-rimmed eye-sockets with frank +curiosity towards such proceedings as were about to follow. It was +easy to see she was accustomed to sitting in chairs. + +For the Wolf Hound Flame chose a Giraffe's head. Certain anatomical +similarities seemed to make the choice wise. With a long vividly +striped stockinet neck wrinkling like a mousquetaire glove, the neat +small head that so closely fitted his own neat small head, the +tweaked, interrogative ears,--Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf Hound, reared +up majestically in his own chair. He also, once convinced that the +mask was not a gas-box, resigned himself to the inevitable, and +corporeally independent of such vain props as Chemistries or Sermons, +lolled his fine height against the mahogany chair-back. + +To Blunder-Blot, the trim Dalmatian, Flame assigned the Parrot's head, +arrogantly beaked, gorgeously variegated, altogether querulous. + +For Lopsy, the crafty Setter, she selected a White Rabbit's artless, +pink-eared visage. + +Yet out of the whole box of masks it had been the Bengal Tiger's +fiercely bewhiskered visage that had fascinated Flame the most. +Regretfully from its more or less nondescript companions, she picked +up the Bengal Tiger now and pulled at its real, bristle-whiskers. In +one of the chairs a dog stirred quite irrelevantly. Cocking her own +head towards the wood-shed Flame could not be perfectly sure whether +she heard a twinge of cat or a twinge of conscience. The unflinching +glare of the Bengal Tiger only served to increase her self-reproach. + +"After all," reasoned Flame, "it would be easy enough to set another +place! And pile a few extra books!... I'm almost sure I saw a black +plush bag in the parlor.... If the cat could be put in something like +a black plush bag,--something perfectly enveloping like that? So that +not a single line of its--its figure could be observed?... And it had +a new head given it? A perfectly sufficient head--like a Bengal +Tiger?--I see no reason why--" + +In five minutes the deed was accomplished. Its lovely sinuous "figure" +reduced to the stolid contour of a black plush work-bag, its small +uneasy head thrust into the roomy muslin cranium of the Bengal Tiger, +the astonished Cat found herself slumping soggily on a great teetering +pile of books, staring down as best she might through the Bengal +Tiger's ear at the weirdest assemblage of animals which any domestic +cat of her acquaintance had ever been forced to contemplate. + +Coincidental with the appearance of the Cat a faint thrill passed +through the rest of the company.... Nothing very much! No more, no +less indeed, than passes through any company at the introduction of +purely extraneous matter. From the empty plate which she had +commandeered as a temporary pillow the Yellow Canary lifted an +interrogative beak.... That was all! At Flame's left, the White-Haired +Rabbit emitted an incongruous bark.... Scarcely worth reporting! +Across the table the Giraffe thumped a white, plumy tail. Thoughtfully +the Parrot's hooked nose slanted slightly to one side. + +"Oh, I wish Bertrand would come!" fretted Flame. "Maybe this time +he'll notice my 'Christmas Crossing' sign!" she chuckled with sudden +triumph. "Talk about surprises!" Very diplomatically as she spoke she +broke another doughnut in two and drew all the dogs' attention to +herself. Almost hysterical with amusement she surveyed the scene +before her. "Well, at least we can have 'grace' before the Preacher +comes!" she laughed. A step on the gravel walk startled her suddenly. +In a flash she had jerked down the blind-folding handkerchief across +her eyes again, and folding her hands and the doughnut before her +burst softly into paraphrase. + + 'Now we--sit us down to eat + Thrice our share of Flesh and Sweet. + If we should burst before we're through, + Oh what in--Dogdom shall we do?' + +Thus it was that the Master of the House, returning unexpectedly to +his unfamiliar domicile, stumbled upon a scene that might have shaken +the reason of a less sober young man. + +Startled first by the unwonted illumination from his kitchen windows, +and second by the unprecedented aroma of Fir Balsam that greeted him +even through the key-hole of his new front door, his feelings may well +be imagined when groping through the dingy hall he first beheld the +gallows-like structure reared in the kitchen doorway. + +"My God!" he ejaculated, "Barrett is getting ready to hang himself! +Gone mad probably--or something!" + +Curdled with horror he forced himself to the object, only to note with +convulsive relief but increasing bewilderment the cheerful phrasing +and ultimate intent of the structure itself. "'Christmas Crossing'?" +he repeated blankly. "'Look out for Surprises'?--'Shop, Cook, and +Glisten'?" With his hand across his eyes he reeled back slightly +against the wall. "It is I that have gone mad!" he gasped. + +A little uncertain whether he was afraid of What-He-Was-About-to-See, +or whether What-He-Was-About-to-See ought to be afraid of him, he +craned his neck as best he could round the corner of the huge buffet +that blocked the kitchen vista. A fresh bewilderment met his eyes. +Where he had once seen cobwebs flapping grayly across the +chimney-breast loomed now the gay worsted recommendation that _dogs +specially_, should be considered in the Christmas Season. Throwing all +caution aside he passed the buffet and plunged into the kitchen. + +"Oh, _do_ hurry!" cried an eager young voice. "I thought my hair +would be white before you came!" + +Like a man paralyzed he stopped short in his tracks to stare at the +scene before him! The long, bright table! The absolutely formal food! +A blindfolded girl! A perfectly strange blindfolded girl ... with her +dark hair forty years this side of white--_begging him to hurry_!... A +Black Velvet Bag surmounted by a Tiger's head stirring strangely in a +chair piled high with books!... Seated next to the Black Velvet Bag a +Canary as big as a Turkey Gobbler!... A Giraffe stepping suddenly +forward with--with dog-paws thrust into his soup plate!... A White +Rabbit heavily wreathed in holly rousing cautiously from his +cushions!... A Parrot with a twitching black and white short-haired +tail!... An empty chair facing the Girl! _An empty chair facing the +Girl._ + +"If this is _madness_," thought Delcote quite precipitously, "I am at +least the Master of the Asylum!" + +In another instant, with a prodigious stride he had slipped into the +vacant seat. + +"... So sorry to have kept you waiting," he murmured. + +At the first sound of that unfamiliar voice, Flame yanked the +handkerchief from her eyes, took one blank glance at the Stranger, and +burst forth into a muffled, but altogether blood-curdling scream. + +"Oh ... Oh ... Owwwwwwww!" said the scream. + +As though waiting only for that one signal to break the spell of their +enchantment, the Canary leaped upward and grabbed the Bengal Tiger by +his muslin nose,--the White Rabbit sprang to "point" on the cooling +turkey, and the Red and Green Parrot fell to the floor in a desperate +effort to settle once and for all with the black spot that itched so +impulsively on his left shoulder! + +For a moment only, in comparative quiet, the Concerned struggled with +the Concerned. Then true to all Dog Psychology,--absolutely +indisputable, absolutely unalterable, the Non-Concerned leaped in upon +the Non-Concerned! Half on his guard, but wholely on his itch, the +jostled Parrot shot like a catapult across the floor! Lost to all +sense of honor or table-manners the benign-faced Giraffe with his +benign face still towering blandly in the air, burst through his own +neck with a most curious anatomical effect,--locked his teeth in the +Parrot's gay throat and rolled with him under the table in mortal +combat! + +Round and round the room spun the Yellow Canary and the Black Plush +Bag! + +Retreating as best she could from her muslin nose,--the Bengal Tiger +or rather that which was within the Bengal Tiger, waged her war for +Freedom! Ripping like a chicken through its shell she succeeded at +last in hatching one front paw and one hind paw into action. +Wallowing,--stumbling,--rolling,--yowling,--she humped from +mantle-piece to chair-top, and from box to table. + +Loyally the rabbit-eared Setter took up the chase. Mauled in the +scuffle he ran with his meek face upside down! Lost to all reason, +defiant of all morale, he proceeded to flush the game! + +Dish-pans clattered, stools tipped over, pictures banged on the walls! + +From her terrorized perch on the back of her chair Flame watched the +fracas with dilated eyes. + +Hunched in the hug of his own arms the Stranger sat rocking himself to +and fro in uncontrollable, choking mirth,--"ribald mirth" was what +Flame called it. + +"Stop!" she begged. "Stop it! Somebody _stop_ it!" + +It was not until the Black Plush Bag at bay had ripped a red streak +down Miss Flora's avid nose that the Stranger rose to interfere. + +Very definitely then, with quick deeds, incisive words, he separated +the immediate combatants, and ordered the other dogs into submission. + +"Here you, Demon Direful!" he addressed the white Wolf Hound. "Drop +that, Orion!" he shouted to the Irish Setter. "Cut it out, John!" he +thundered at the Coach Dog. + +"Their names are 'Beautiful-Lovely'!" cried Flame. "And 'Lopsy!' and +'Blunder-Blot!'" + +With his hand on the Wolf Hound's collar, the Stranger stopped and +stared up with frank astonishment, not to say resentment, at the +girl's interference. + +"Their names are _what_?" he said. + +Something in the special intonation of the question infuriated +Flame.... Maybe she thought his mouth scornful,--his narrowing +eyes...? Goodness knows what she thought of his suddenly narrowing +eyes! + +In an instant she had jumped from her retreat to the floor. + +"Who are you, anyway?" she demanded. "How dare you come here like +this? Butting into my party!... And--and spoiling my discipline with +the dogs! Who are you, I say?" + +With Demon Direful, alias Beautiful-Lovely tugging wildly at his +restraint, the Stranger's scornful mouth turned precipitously up, +instead of down. + +"Who am I?" he said. "Why, no one special at all except just--the +Master of the House!" + +"_What_?" gasped Flame. + +"Earle Delcote," bowed the Stranger. + +With a little hand that trembled perfectly palpably Flame reached back +to the arm of the big carved chair for support. + +"Why--why, but Mr. Delcote is an old man," she gasped. "I'm almost +sure he's an old man." + +The smile on Delcote's mouth spread suddenly to his eyes. + +"Not yet,--Thank God!" he bowed. + +With a panic-stricken glance at doors, windows, cracks, the chimney +pipe itself, Flame sank limply down in her seat again and gestured +towards the empty place opposite her. + +"Have a--have a chair," she stammered. Great tears welled suddenly to +her eyes. "Oh, I--I know I oughtn't to be here," she struggled. "It's +perfectly ... awful! I haven't the slightest right! Not the slightest! +It's the--the cheekiest thing that any girl in the world ever did!... +But your Butler said...! And he did so want to go away and--And I did +so love your dogs! And I did so want to make _one_ Christmas in the +world just--exactly the way I wanted it! And--and--Mother and Father +will be crazy!... And--and--" + +Without a single glance at anything except herself, the Master of the +House slipped back into his chair. + +"Have a heart!" he said. + +Flame did _not_ accept this suggestion. With a very severe frown and +downcast eyes she sat staring at the table. It seemed a very cheerless +table suddenly, with all the dogs in various stages of disheveled +finery grouped blatantly around their Master's chair. + +"I can at least have my cat," she thought, "my--faithful cat!" In +another instant she had slipped from the table, extracted poor Puss +from a clutter of pans in the back of a cupboard, stripped the last +shred of masquerade from her outraged form, and brought her back +growling and bristling to perch on one arm of the high-backed chair. +"Th--ere!" said Flame. + +Glancing up from this innocent triumph, she encountered the eyes of +the Master of the House fixed speculatively on the big turkey. + +"I'm afraid everything is very cold," she confided with distinctly +formal regret. + +"Not for anything," laughed Delcote quite suddenly, "would I have kept +you waiting--if I had only known." + +Two spots of color glowed hotly in the girl's cheeks. + +"It was not for you I was waiting," she said coldly. + +"N--o?" teased Delcote. "You astonish me. For whom, then? Some +incredible wight who, worse than late--isn't going to show up at +all?... Heaven sent, I consider myself.... How else could so little a +girl have managed so big a turkey?" + +"There ... isn't any ... carving knife," whispered Flame. + +The tears were glistening on her cheeks now instead of just in her +eyes. A less observing man than Delcote might have thought the tears +were really for the carving knife. + +"What? No carving knife?" he roared imperiously. "And the house +guaranteed 'furnished'?" Very furiously he began to hunt all around +the kitchen in the most impossible places. + +"Oh, it's furnished all right," quivered Flame. "It's just chock-full +of dead things! Pressed flowers! And old plush bags! And pressed +flowers! And--and pressed flowers!" + +"Great Heavens!" groaned Delcote. "And I came here to forget 'dead +things'!" + +"Your--your Butler said you'd had misfortunes," murmured Flame. + +"Misfortunes?" rallied Delcote. "I should think I had! In a single +year I've lost health,--money,--most everything I own in the world +except my man and my dogs!" + +"They're ... good dogs," testified Flame. + +"And the Doctor's sent me here for six months," persisted Delcote, +"before he'll even hear of my plunging into things again!" + +"Six months is a--a good long time," said Flame. "If you'd turn the +hems we could make yellow curtains for the parlor in no time at all!" + +"W--we?" stammered Delcote. + +"M--Mother," said Flame. "... It's a long time since any dogs lived in +the Rattle-Pane House." + +"Rattle-_Brain_ house?" bridled Delcote. + +"Rattle-_Pane_ House," corrected Flame. + +A little bit worriedly Delcote returned to his seat. + +"I shall have to rend the turkey, instead of carve it," he said. + +"Rend it," acquiesced Flame. + +In the midst of the rending a dark frown appeared between Delcote's +eyes. + +"These--these guests that you were expecting--?" he questioned. + +"Oh, _stop_!" cried Flame. "Dreadful as I am I never--never would have +dreamed of inviting 'guests'!" + +"This 'guest' then," frowned Delcote. "Was he...?" + +"Oh, you mean ... Bertrand?" flushed Flame. "Oh, truly, I didn't +invite him! He just butted in ... same as you!" + +"Same as ... I?" stammered Delcote. + +"Well..." floundered Flame. "Well ... you know what I mean and ..." + +With peculiar intentness the Master of the House fixed his eyes on the +knotted white handkerchief which Flame had thrown across the corner of +her chair. + +"And is this 'Bertrand' person so ... so dazzling," he questioned, +"that human eye may not look safely upon his countenance?" + +"Bertrand ... dazzling?" protested Flame. "Oh, no! He's really quite +dull.... It was only," she explained with sudden friendliness, "It was +only that I had promised Mother not to 'see' him.... So, of course, +when he butted in I...." + +"O--h," relaxed the Master of the House. With a precipitous flippancy +of manners which did not conform at all to the somewhat tragic +austerity of his face he snatched up his knife and fork and thumped +joyously on the table with the handles of them. "And some people talk +about a country village being dull in the Winter Time!" he chuckled. +"With a Dog's Masquerade and a Robbery at the Rectory all happening +the same evening!" Grabbing her cat in her arms, Flame jerked her +chair back from the table. + +"A--a robbery at the Rectory?" she gasped. "Why--why, I'm the Rectory! +I must go home at once!" + +"Oh, Shucks!" shrugged the Master of the House. "It's all over now. +But the people at the railroad station were certainly buzzing about it +as I came through." + +"B--buzzing about it?" articulated Flame with some difficulty. + +Expeditiously the Master of the House resumed his rending of the +turkey. + +"Are you really from the Rectory?" he questioned. "How amusing.... +Well, there's nothing really you could do about it now.... The +constable and his prisoner are already on their way to the County +Seat--wherever that may be. And a freshly 'burgled' house is rather a +creepy place for a young girl to return to all alone.... Your parents +are away, I believe?" + +"Con--stable ... constable," babbled Flame quite idiotically. + +"Yes, the regular constable was off Christmasing somewhere it seems, +so he put a substitute on his job, a stranger from somewhere. Some +substitute that! No mulling over hot toddies on Christmas night for +him! He _saw_ the marauder crawling in through the Rectory window! He +_saw_ him fumbling now to the left, now to the right, all through the +front hall! He followed him up the stairs to a closet where the silver +was evidently kept! He caught the man red-handed as it were! Or +rather--white-handed," flushed the Master of the House for some quite +unaccountable reason. "To be perfectly accurate," he explained +conscientiously, "he was caught with a pair of--of--" Delicately he +spelt out the word. "With a pair of--c-o-r-s-e-t-s rolled up in his +hand. But inside the roll it seemed there was a solid silver--very +elaborate carving set which the Parish had recently presented. The +wretch was just unrolling it,--them, when he was caught." + +"That was Bertrand!" said Flame. "My Father's Lay Reader." + +It was the man's turn now to jump to his feet. + +"_What_?" he cried. + +"I sent him for the carving knife," said Flame. + +"_What_?" repeated the man. Consternation versus Hilarity went racing +suddenly like a cat-and-dog combat across his eyes. + +"Yes," said Flame. + +From the outside door the sound of furious knocking occurred suddenly. + +"That sounds to me like--like parents' knocking," shivered Flame. + +"It sounds to me like an escaped Lay Reader," said her Host. + +With a single impulse they both started for the door. + +"Don't worry, Little Girl," whispered the young Stranger in the dark +hall. + +"I'll try not to," quivered Flame. + +They were both right, it seemed. + +It was Parents _and_ the Lay Reader. + +All three breathless, all three excited, all three reproachful,--they +swept into the warm, balsam-scented Rattle-Pane House with a gust of +frost, a threat of disaster. + +"F--lame," sighed her Father. + +"Flame!" scolded her Mother. + +"Flame?" implored the Lay Reader. + +"What a pretty name," beamed the Master of the House. "Pray be seated, +everybody," he gestured graciously to left and right,--shoving one +dog expeditiously under the table with his foot, while he yanked +another out of a chair with his least gesticulating hand. "This is +certainly a very great pleasure, I assure you," he affirmed distinctly +to Miss Flamande Nourice. "Returning quite unexpectedly to my new +house this lonely Christmas evening," he explained very definitely to +the Rev. Flamande Nourice, "I can't express to you what it means to me +to find this pleasant gathering of neighbors waiting here to welcome +me! And when I think of the effort _you_ must have made to get here, +Mr. Bertrand," he beamed. "A young man of all your obligations +and--complications--" + +"Pleasant ... gathering of neighbors?" questioned Mrs. Nourice with +some emotion. + +"Oh, I forgot," deprecated the Master of the House with real concern. +"Your Christmas season is not, of course, as inherently 'pleasant' as +one might wish.... I was told at the railroad station how you and Mr. +Nourice had been called away by the illness of a relative." + +"We were called away," confided Mrs. Nourice with increasing asperity, +"called away at considerable inconvenience--by a very sick +relative--to receive the present of a Piebald pony." + +"Oh, goody!" quickened Flame and collapsed again under the weight of +her Mother's glance. + +"And then came this terrible telephone message," shuddered her Mother. +"The implied dishonor of one of your Father's most trusted--most +trusted associates!" + +"I was right in the midst of such an interesting book," deplored her +Father. "And Uncle Wally wouldn't lend it." + +"So we borrowed Uncle Wally's new automobile and started right for +home!" explained her Mother. "It was at the Junction that we made +connections with the Constable and his prisoner." + +"His--victim," intercepted the Lay Reader coldly. + +At this interception everybody turned suddenly and looked at the Lay +Reader. His mouth was twisted very slightly to one side. It gave him a +rather unpleasant snarling expression. If this expression had been +vocal instead of muscular it would have shocked his hearers. + +"Your Father had to go on board the train and identify him," persisted +Flame's Mother. "It was very distressing.... The Constable was most +unwilling to release him. Your Father had to use every kind of an +argument." + +"Every ... kind," mused her Father. "He doesn't even deny being in the +house," continued her Mother, "being in my closet, ... being caught +with a--a--" + +"With a silver carving knife and fork in his hand," intercepted the +Lay Reader hastily. + +"Yet all the time he persists," frowned Flame's Mother, "that there is +some one in the world who can give a perfectly good explanation if +only,--he won't even say 'he or she' but 'it', if only 'it' would." + +Something in the stricken expression of her daughter's face brought a +sudden flicker of suspicion to the Mother's eyes. + +"_You_ don't know anything about this, do you, Flame?" she demanded. +"Is it remotely possible that after your promise to me,--your sacred +promise to me--?" The whole structure of the home,--of mutual +confidence,--of all the Future itself, crackled and toppled in her +voice. + +To the Lay Reader's face, and right _through_ the Lay Reader's face, +to the face of the Master of the House, Flame's glance went homing +with an unaccountable impulse. + +With one elbow leaning casually on the mantle-piece, his narrowed eyes +faintly inscrutable, faintly smiling, it seemed suddenly to the young +Master of the House that he had been waiting all his discouraged years +for just that glance. His heart gave the queerest jump. + +Flame's face turned suddenly very pink. + +Like a person in a dream, she turned back to her Mother. There was a +smile on her face, but even the smile was the smile of a dreaming +person. + +"No--Mother," she said, "I haven't seen Bertrand ... to-day." + +"Why, you're looking right at him now!" protested her exasperated +Mother. + +With a gentle murmur of dissent, Flame's Father stepped forward and +laid his arm across the young girl's shoulder. "She--she may be +looking at him," he said. "But I'm almost perfectly sure that she +doesn't ... see him." + +"Why, whatever in the world do you mean?" demanded his wife. "Whatever +in the world does anybody mean? If there was only another woman here! +A mature ... sane woman! A----" With a flare of accusation she turned +from Flame to the Master of the House. "This Miss Flora that my +daughter spoke of,--where is she? I insist on seeing her! Please +summon her instantly!" + +Crossing genially to the table the Master of the House reached down +and dragged out the Bull Dog by the brindled scuff of her neck. The +scratch on her nose was still bleeding slightly. And one eye was +closed. + +"This is--Miss Flora!" he said. + +Indignantly Flame's Mother glanced at the dog, and then from her +daughter's face to the face of the young man again. + +"And you call _that_--a lady?" she demanded. + +"N--not technically," admitted the young man. + +For an instant a perfectly tense silence reigned. Then from under a +shadowy basket the Cat crept out, shining, sinuous, with extended +paw, and began to pat a sprig of holly cautiously along the floor. + +Yielding to the reaction Flame bent down suddenly and hugging the Wolf +Hound's head to her breast buried her face in the soft, sweet +shagginess. + +"Not sanitary, Mother?" she protested. "Why, they're as sanitary +as--as violets!" + +As though dreaming he were late to church and had forgotten his +vestments, Flame's Father reached out nervously and draped a great +string of ground-pine stole-like about his neck. + +"We all," broke in the Master of the House quite irrelevantly, "seem +to have experienced a slight twinge of irritability--the past few +minutes. Hunger, I've no doubt!... So suppose we all sit down +together to this sumptuous--if somewhat chilled repast? After the soup +certainly, even after very cold soup, all explanations I'm sure will +be--cheerfully and satisfactorily exchanged. Miss--Flame I know has a +most amusing story to tell and--" + +"Oh, yes!" rallied Flame. "And it's almost all about being blindfolded +and sending poor Mr. Lorello--" + +"So if by any chance, Mr.--Mr. Bertrand," interrupted the Master of +the House a bit abruptly, "you happen to have the carving knife and +fork still on your person ... I thought I saw a white string +hanging--" + +"I have!" said the Lay Reader with his first real grin. + +With great formality the Master of the House drew back a chair and +bowed Flame's Mother to it. + +Then suddenly the Red Setter lifted his sensitive nose in the air, and +the spotted Dalmatian bristled faintly across the ridge of his back. +Through the whole room, it seemed, swept a curious cottony sense of +Something-About-to-Happen! Was it that a sound hushed? Or that a hush +decided suddenly to be a sound? + +With a little sharp catch of her breath Flame dashed to the window, +and swung the sash upward! Where once had breathed the drab, dusty +smell of frozen grass and mud quickened suddenly a curious metallic +dampness like the smell of new pennies. + +"Mr. ... Delcote!" she called. + +In an instant his slender form silhouetted darkly with hers in the +open window against the eternal mystery and majesty of a Christmas +night. + +"And _then_ the snow came!" + + +END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs, by +Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD-WILL TO DOGS *** + +***** This file should be named 20213-8.txt or 20213-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/2/1/20213/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs + +Author: Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + +Release Date: December 29, 2006 [EBook #20213] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD-WILL TO DOGS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="center"><img src="images/image_01.jpg" alt="Cover Page" width="400" height="579" /></div> +<p> </p> +<div class="center"><img src="images/image_03.jpg" alt="Title Page" width="500" height="811" /></div> + +<p> </p> +<h1>Peace on Earth,<br /> +Good-Will to Dogs</h1> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<h3>By</h3> + +<h2>Eleanor Hallowell Abbott</h2> + +<h4>Author of "Old Dad"</h4> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + + +<h3>New York</h3> + +<h3>E. P. Dutton & Company</h3> + +<h3>681 Fifth Avenue</h3> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1920,</span></p> + +<p class="center">BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>First printing October, 1920</i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Second printing October, 1920</i></p> + +<p class="center"><i>Third printing October, 1920</i> +</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + + + + + + +<table summary="Contents"> +<tr><td></td><td class="tocpg">PAGE</td></tr> +<tr><td><a href="#PART_I">Part I</a></td><td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> +</tr> +<tr><td><a href="#PART_II">Part II</a></td><td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PEACE_ON_EARTH_GOOD_WILL_TO_DOGS" id="PEACE_ON_EARTH_GOOD_WILL_TO_DOGS"></a>PEACE ON EARTH GOOD WILL TO DOGS</h2> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I</h2> + +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_02.jpg" alt="I" width="70" height="72" /></div> +<p>f you don't like Christmas stories, don't read this one!</p> + +<p>And if you don't like dogs I don't know just what to advise you to do!</p> + +<p>For I warn you perfectly frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and +distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story +whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest +in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, +crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> brand of brain and ink +can conjure up on a single keyboard! And very large-sized dogs shall +romp through every page! And the mercury shiver perpetually in the +vicinity of zero! And every foot of earth be crusty-brown and bare +with no white snow at all till the very last moment when you'd just +about given up hope! And all the heart of the story is very,—oh +<i>very</i> young!</p> + +<p>For purposes of propriety and general historical authenticity there +are of course parents in the story. And one or two other oldish +persons. But they all go away just as early in the narrative as I can +manage it.—Are obliged to go away!</p> + +<p>Yet lest you find in this general combination of circumstances some +sinister threat of audacity, let me conventionalize<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> the story at once +by opening it at that most conventional of all conventional +Christmas-story hours,—the Twilight of Christmas Eve.</p> + +<p>Nuff said?—Christmas Eve, you remember? Twilight? Awfully cold +weather? And somebody very young?</p> + +<p>Now for the story itself!</p> + +<p>After five blustering, wintry weeks of village speculation and gossip +there was of course considerable satisfaction in being the first to +solve the mysterious holiday tenancy of the Rattle-Pane House.</p> + +<p>Breathless with excitement Flame Nourice telephoned the news from the +village post-office. From a pedestal of boxes fairly bulging with +red-wheeled go-carts, one keen young elbow rammed for balance into a +gay glassy shelf of stick-candy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> green tissue garlands tickling +across her cheek, she sped the message to her mother.</p> + +<p>"O Mother-Funny!" triumphed Flame. "I've found out who's Christmasing +at the Rattle-Pane House!—It's a red-haired setter dog with one black +ear! And he's sitting at the front gate this moment! Superintending +the unpacking of the furniture van! And I've named him Lopsy!"</p> + +<p>"Why, Flame; how—absurd!" gasped her mother. In consideration of the +fact that Flame's mother had run all the way from the icy-footed +chicken yard to answer the telephone it shows distinctly what stuff +she was made of that she gasped nothing else.</p> + +<p>And that Flame herself re-telephoned within the half hour to +acknowledge her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> absurdity shows equally distinctly what stuff <i>she</i> +was made of! It was from the summit of a crate of holly-wreaths that +she telephoned this time.</p> + +<p>"Oh Mother-Funny," apologized Flame, "you were perfectly right. No lone +dog in the world could possibly manage a great spooky place like the +Rattle-Pane House. There are two other dogs with him! A great long, narrow +sofa-shaped dog upholstered in lemon and white,—something terribly +ferocious like 'Russian Wolf Hound' I think he is! But I've named him +Beautiful-Lovely! And there's the neatest looking paper-white coach dog +just perfectly ruined with ink-spots! Blunder-Blot, I think, will make a +good name for him! And—"</p> + +<p>"Oh—Fl—ame!" panted her Mother. "Dogs—do—not—take houses!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> It +was not from the chicken-yard that she had come running this time but +only from her Husband's Sermon-Writing-Room in the attic.</p> + +<p>"Oh don't they though?" gloated Flame. "Well, they've taken this one, +anyway! Taken it by storm, I mean! Scratched all the green paint off +the front door! Torn a hole big as a cavern in the Barberry Hedge! +Pushed the sun-dial through a bulkhead!—If it snows to-night the +cellar'll be a Glacier! And—"</p> + +<p>"Dogs—do—not—take—houses," persisted Flame's mother. She was still +persisting it indeed when she returned to her husband's study.</p> + +<p>Her husband, it seemed, had not noticed her absence. Still poring over +the tomes and commentaries incidental to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> preparation of his next +Sunday's sermon his fine face glowed half frown, half ecstasy, in the +December twilight, while close at his elbow all unnoticed a smoking +kerosine lamp went smudging its acrid path to the ceiling. Dusky lock +for dusky lock, dreamy eye for dreamy eye, smoking lamp for smoking +lamp, it might have been a short-haired replica of Flame herself.</p> + +<p>"Oh if Flame had only been 'set' like the maternal side of the house!" +reasoned Flame's Mother. "Or merely dreamy like her Father! Her Father +being only dreamy could sometimes be diverted from his dreams! But to +be 'set' and 'dreamy' both? Absolutely 'set' on being absolutely +'dreamy'? That was Flame!" With renewed tenacity Flame's Mother +reverted to Truth as Truth. "Dogs do <i>not</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> take houses!" she affirmed +with unmistakable emphasis.</p> + +<p>"Eh? What?" jumped her husband. "Dogs? Dogs? Who said anything about +dogs?" With a fretted pucker between his brows he bent to his work +again. "You interrupted me," he reproached her. "My sermon is about +Hell-Fire.—I had all but smelled it.—It was very disagreeable." With +a gesture of impatience he snatched up his notes and tore them in two. +"I think I will write about the Garden of Eden instead!" he rallied. +"The Garden of Eden in Iris time! Florentina Alba everywhere! +Whiteness! Sweetness!—Now let me see,—orris root I believe is +deducted from the Florentina Alba—."</p> + +<p>"U—m—m—m," sniffed Flame's Mother. With an impulse purely practical +she started for the kitchen. "The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> season happens to be Christmas +time," she suggested bluntly. "Now if you could see your way to make a +sermon that smelt like doughnuts and plum-pudding—"</p> + +<p>"Doughnuts?" queried her Husband and hurried after her. Supplementing +the far, remote Glory-of-God expression in his face, the +glory-of-doughnuts shone suddenly very warmly.</p> + +<p>Flame at least did not have to be reminded about the Seasons.</p> + +<p>"Oh <i>mother</i>!" telephoned Flame almost at once, "It's—so much nearer +Christmas than it was half an hour ago! Are you sure everything will +keep? All those big packages that came yesterday? That humpy one +especially? Don't you think you ought to peep? Or poke? Just the +teeniest, tiniest little peep or poke? It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> would be a shame if +anything spoiled! A—turkey—or a—or a fur coat—or anything."</p> + +<p>"I am—making doughnuts," confided her Mother with the faintest +possible taint of asperity.</p> + +<p>"O—h," conceded Flame. "And Father's watching them? Then I'll hurry! +M—Mother?" deprecated the excited young voice. "You are always so +horridly right! Lopsy and Beautiful-Lovely and Blunder-Blot are <i>not</i> +Christmasing all alone in the Rattle-Pane House! There is a man with +them! Don't tell Father,—he's so nervous about men!"</p> + +<p>"A—man?" stammered her Mother. "Oh I hope not a young man! Where did +he come from?"</p> + +<p>"Oh I don't think he came at all," con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>fided Flame. It was Flame who +was perplexed this time. "He looks to me more like a person who had +always been there! Like something I mean that the dogs found in the +attic! Quite crumpled he is! And with a red waistcoat!—A—A butler +perhaps?—A—A sort of a second hand butler? Oh Mother!—I wish we had +a butler!"</p> + +<p>"Flame—?" interrupted her Mother quite abruptly. "Where are you doing +all this telephoning from? I only gave you eighteen cents and it was +to buy cereal with."</p> + +<p>"Cereal?" considered Flame. "Oh that's all right," she glowed +suddenly. "I've paid cash for the telephoning and charged the cereal."</p> + +<p>With a swallow faintly guttural Flame's Mother hung up the receiver.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +"Dogs—do—not—have—butlers," she persisted unshakenly.</p> + +<p>She was perfectly right. They did not, it seemed.</p> + +<p>No one was quicker than Flame to acknowledge a mistake. Before five +o'clock Flame had added a telephone item to the cereal bill.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p><p>"Oh—Mother," questioned Flame. "The little red sweater and Tam that I +have on?—Would they be all right, do you think, for me to make a call in? +Not a formal call, of course,—just a—a neighborly greeting at the door? +It being Christmas Eve and everything!—And as long as I have to pass +right by the house anyway?—There is a lady at the Rattle-Pane House! +A—A—what Father would call a Lady Maiden!—Miss—"</p> + +<p>"Oh not a real lady, I think," protested her Mother. "Not with all +those dogs. No real lady I think would have so many dogs.—It—It +isn't sanitary."</p> + +<p>"Isn't—sanitary?" cried Flame. "Why Mother, they are the most +absolutely—perfectly sanitary dogs you ever saw in your life!" Into +her eager young voice an expression of ineffable dignity shot +suddenly. "Well—really, Mother," she said, "In whatever concerns men +or crocheting—I'm perfectly willing to take Father's advice or yours. +But after all, I'm eighteen," stiffened the young voice. "And when it +comes to dogs—I must use my own judgment!"</p> + +<p>"And just what is the lady's name?" questioned her Mother a bit +weakly.</p> + +<p>"Her name is 'Miss Flora'!" brightened Flame. "The Butler has just +gone<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> to the Station to meet her! I heard him telephoning quite +frenziedly! I think she must have missed her train or something! It +seemed to make everybody very nervous! Maybe <i>she's</i> nervous! Maybe +she's a nervous invalid! With a lost Lover somewhere! And all sorts of +pressed flowers!—Somebody ought to call anyway! Call right away, I +mean, before she gets any more nervous!—So many people's first +impressions of a place—I've heard—are spoiled for lack of some +perfectly silly little thing like a nutmeg grater or a hot water +bottle! And oh, Mother, it's been so long since any one lived in the +Rattle-Pane House! Not for years and years and years! Not dogs, +anyway! Not a lemon and white wolf hound! Not setters! Not spotty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +dogs!—Oh Mother, just one little wee single minute at the door? Just +long enough to say 'The Rev. and Mrs. Flamande Nourice, and Miss +Nourice, present their compliments!'—And are you by any chance short +a marrow-bone? Or would you possibly care to borrow an extra quilt to +rug-up under the kitchen table?... Blunder-Blot doesn't look very +thick. Or—Oh Mother, <i>p-l-e-a-s-e!</i>"</p> + +<p>When Flame said "Please" like that the word was no more, no less, than +the fabled bundle of rags or haunch of venison hurled back from a +wolf-pursued sleigh to divert the pursuer even temporarily from the +main issue. While Flame's Mother paused to consider the particularly +flavorous sweetness of that entreaty,—to picture the flashing eye, +the pulsing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> throat, the absurdly crinkled nostril that invariably +accompanied all Flame's entreaties, Flame herself was escaping!</p> + +<p>Taken all in all, escaping was one of the best things that Flame +did.... As well as the most becoming! Whipped into scarlet by the +sudden plunge from a stove-heated store into the frosty night her +young cheeks fairly blazed their bright reaction. Frost and speed +quickened her breath. Glint for glint her shining eyes challenged the +moon. Fearful even yet that some tardy admonition might overtake her +she sped like a deer through the darkness.</p> + +<p>It was a dull-smelling night. Pretty, but very dull-smelling. +Disdainfully her nostrils crinkled their disappointment.</p> + +<p>"Christmas Time adventures ought to smell like Christmas!" she +scolded. "May<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>be if I'm ever President," she argued, "I won't do so +awfully well with the Tariff or things like that! But Christmas shall +smell of Christmas! Not just of frozen mud! And camphor balls!... I'll +have great vats of Fir Balsam essence at every street corner! And +gigantic atomizers! And every passerby shall be sprayed! And stores! +And churches! And—And everybody who doesn't like Christmas shall be +<i>dipped</i>!"</p> + +<p>Under her feet the smoothish village road turned suddenly into the +harsh and hobbly ruts of a country lane. With fluctuant blackness +against immutable blackness great sweeping pine trees swished weirdly +into the horizon. Where the hobbly lane curved darkly into a meadow +through a snarl of winter-stricken willows the rattle of a loose +window-pane<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> smote quite distinctly on the ear. It was a horrid, +deserted sound. And with the instinctive habit of years Flame's little +hand clutched at her heart. Then quite abruptly she laughed aloud.</p> + +<p>"Oh you can't scare me any more, you gloomy old Rattle-Pane House!" +she laughed. "You're not deserted now! People are Christmasing in you! +Whether you like it or not you're being Christmased!"</p> + +<p>Very tentatively she puckered her lips to a whistle. Almost instantly +from the darkness ahead a dog's bark rang out, deep, sonorous, faintly +suspicious. With a little chuckle of joy she crawled through the +Barberry hedge and emerged for a single instant only at her full +height before three furry shapes came hurtling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> out of the darkness +and toppled her over backwards.</p> + +<p>"Stop, Beautiful-Lovely!" she gasped. "Stop, Lopsy! Behave yourself, +Blunder-Blot! <i>Sillies</i>! Don't you know I'm the lady that was talking +to you this morning through the picket fence? Don't you know I'm the +lady that fed you the box of cereal?—Oh dear—Oh dear—Oh dear," she +struggled. "I knew, of course, that there were three dogs—but who +ever in the world would have guessed that three could be so many?"</p> + +<p>As expeditiously as possible she picked herself up and bolted for the +house with two furry shapes leaping largely on either side of her and +one cold nose sniffing interrogatively at her heels. Her heart was +very light,—her pulses jumping with excitement,—an occasional furry +head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> doming into the palm of her hand warmed the whole bleak night +with its sense of mute companionship. But the back of her heels felt +certainly very queer. Even the warm yellow lights of the Rattle-Pane +House did not altogether dispel her uneasiness.</p> + +<p>"Maybe I'd better not plan to make my call so—so very informal," she +decided suddenly. "Not at a house where there are quite so many dogs! +Not at a house where there is a butler ... anyway!"</p> + +<p>Crowding and pushing and yelping and fawning around her, it was the +dogs who announced her ultimate arrival. Like a drift of snow the huge +wolf-hound whirled his white shagginess into the vestibule. Shrill as +a banging blind the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> impetuous coach-dog lurched his sleek weight +against the door. Sucking at a crack of light the red setter's kindled +nose glowed and snorted with dragonlike ferocity. Without knock or +ring the door-handle creaked and turned, three ecstatic shapes went +hurtling through a yellow glare into the hall beyond, and Flame found +herself staring up into the blinking, astonished eyes of the crumpled +old man with the red waistcoat.</p> + +<p>"G—Good evening,—Butler!" she rallied.</p> + +<p>"Good evening, Miss!" stammered the Butler.</p> + +<p>"I've—I've come to call," confided Flame.</p> + +<p>"To—call?" stammered the Butler.</p> + +<p>"Yes," conceded Flame. "I—I don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> happen to have an engraved card +with me." Before the continued imperturbability of the old Butler all +subterfuge seemed suddenly quite useless. "I <i>never</i> have had an +engraved card," she confided quite abruptly. "But you might tell Miss +Flora if you please—" ... Would nothing crack the Butler's +imperturbability?... Well maybe she could prove just a little bit +imperturbable herself! "Oh! Butlers don't 'tell' people things, do +they?... They always 'announce' things, don't they?... Well, kindly +announce to Miss Flora that the—the Minister's Daughter is—at the +door!... Oh, <i>no</i>! It isn't asking for a subscription or anything!" +she hastened quite suddenly to explain. "It's just a Christian +call!... B—Being so nervous and lost on the train and everything ... +we thought Miss Flora<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> might be glad to know that there were +neighbors.... We live so near and everything.... And can run like the +wind! Oh, not Mother, of course!... She's a bit stout! And Father +starts all right but usually gets thinking of something else! But +I...? Kindly announce to Miss Flora," she repeated with palpable +crispness, "that the Minister's Daughter is at the door!"</p> + +<p>Fixedly old, fixedly crumpled, fixedly imperturbable, the Butler +stepped back a single jerky pace and bowed her towards the parlor.</p> + +<p>"Now," thrilled Flame, "the adventure really begins."</p> + +<p>It certainly was a sad and romantic looking parlor, and strangely +furnished, Flame thought, for even "moving times." Through a maze of +bulging packing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> boxes and barrels she picked her way to a faded +rose-colored chair that flanked the fire-place. That the chair was +already half occupied by a pile of ancient books and four dusty garden +trowels only served to intensify the general air of gloom. Presiding +over all, two dreadful bouquets of long-dead grasses flared wanly on +the mantle-piece. And from the tattered old landscape paper on the +walls Civil War heroes stared regretfully down through pale and +tarnished frames.</p> + +<p>"Dear me ... dear me," shivered Flame. "They're not going to Christmas +at all ... evidently! Not a sprig of holly anywhere! Not a ravel of +tinsel! Not a jingle bell!... Oh she must have lost a lot of lovers," +thrilled Flame. "I can bring her flowers, anyway! My very first Paper +White Narcissus! My—."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> + +<p>With a scrape of the foot the Butler made known his return.</p> + +<p>"Miss Flora!" he announced.</p> + +<p>With a catch of her breath Flame jumped to her feet and turned to +greet the biggest, ugliest, most brindled, most wizened Bull Dog she +had ever seen in her life.</p> + +<p>"<i>Miss Flora!</i>" repeated the old Butler succinctly.</p> + +<p>"Miss Flora?" gasped Flame. "Why.... Why, I thought Miss Flora was a +Lady! Why—"</p> + +<p>"Miss Flora is indeed a very grand lady, Miss!" affirmed the Butler +without a flicker of expression. "Of a pedigree so famous ... so +distinguished ... so ..." Numerically on his fingers he began to count +the distinctions. "Five prizes this year! And three last! Do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> you mind +the chop?" he gloated. "The breadth! The depth!... Did you never hear +of alauntes?" he demanded. "Them bull-baiting dogs that was invented +by the second Duke of York or thereabouts in the year 1406?"</p> + +<p>"Oh my Glory!" thrilled Flame. "Is Miss Flora as old as <i>that</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Miss Flora," said the old Butler with some dignity, "is young—hardly +two in fact—so young that she seems to me but just weaned."</p> + +<p>With her great eyes goggled to a particularly disconcerting sort of +scrutiny Miss Flora sprang suddenly forward to investigate the +visitor.</p> + +<p>As though by a preconcerted signal a chair crashed over in the hall +and the wolf hound and the setter and the coach dog came hurtling back +in a furiously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> cordial onslaught. With wags and growls and yelps of +joy all four dogs met in Flame's lap.</p> + +<p>"They seem to like me, don't they?" triumphed Flame. Intermittently +through the melee of flapping ears,—shoving shoulders,—waving paws, +her beaming little face proved the absolute sincerity of that triumph. +"Mother's never let me have any dogs," she confided. "Mother thinks +they're not—Oh, of course, I realize that four dogs is a—a good +many," she hastened diplomatically to concede to a certain sudden +droop around the old Butler's mouth corners.</p> + +<p>From his slow, stooping poke of the sulky fire the old Butler glanced +up with a certain plaintive intentness.</p> + +<p>"All dogs is too many," he affirmed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Come Christmas time I wishes I was dead."</p> + +<p>"Wish you were dead ... at Christmas Time?" cried Flame. Acute shock +was in her protest.</p> + +<p>"It's the feedin'," sighed the old Butler. "It ain't that I mind +eatin' with them on All Saints' Day or Fourth of July or even Sundays. +But come Christmas Time it seems like I craves to eat with More +Humans.... I got a nephew less'n twenty miles away. He's got cider in +his cellar. And plum puddings. His woman she raises guinea chickens. +And mince pies there is. And tasty gravies.—But me I mixes dog bread +and milk—dog bread and milk—till I can't see nothing—think nothing +but mush. And him with cider in his cellar!... It ain't as though Mr. +Delcote ever came himself to prove any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>thing," he argued. "Not he! Not +Christmas Time! It's travelling he is.... He's had ... misfortunes," +he confided darkly. "He travels for 'em same as some folks travels for +their healths. Most especially at Christmas Time he travels for his +misfortunes! He ..."</p> + +<p>"<i>Mr. Delcote</i>?" quickened Flame. "Mr. Delcote?" (Now at last was the +mysterious tenancy about to be divulged?)</p> + +<p>"All he says," persisted the old Butler. "All he says is 'Now +Barret,'—that's me, 'Now Barret I trust your honor to see that the +dogs ain't neglected just because it's Christmas. There ain't no +reason, Barret', he says, 'why innocent dogs should suffer Christmas +just because everybody else does. They ain't done nothing.... It won't +do now Barret', he says, 'for you to give 'em their dinner at dawn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +when they ain't accustomed to it, and a pail of water, and shut 'em up +while you go off for the day with any barrel of cider. You know what +dogs is, Barret', he says. 'And what they isn't. They've got to be fed +regular', he says, 'and with discipline. Else there's deaths.—Some +natural. Some unnatural. And some just plain spectacular from +furniture falling on their arguments. So if there's any fatalities +come this Christmas Time, Barret', he says, 'or any undue gains in +weight or losses in weight, I shall infer, Barret', he says, 'that you +was absent without leave.' ... It don't look like a very wholesome +Christmas for me," sighed the old Butler. "Not either way. Not what +you'd call wholesome."</p> + +<p>"But this Mr. Delcote?" puzzled Flame. "What a perfectly horrid man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +he must be to give such heavenly dogs nothing but dog-bread and milk +for their Christmas dinner!... Is he young? Is he old? Is he thin? Is +he fat? However in the world did he happen to come to a queer, +battered old place like the Rattle-Pane House? But once come why +didn't he stay? And—And—And—?"</p> + +<p>"Yes'm," sighed the old Butler.</p> + +<p>In a ferment of curiosity, Flame edged jerkily forward, and subsided +as jerkily again.</p> + +<p>"Oh, if this only was a Parish Call," she deprecated, "I could ask +questions right out loud. 'How? Where? Why? When?' ... But being just +a social call—I suppose—I suppose...?" Appealingly her eager eyes +searched the old Butler's inscrutable face.</p> + +<p>"Yes'm," repeated the old Butler<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> dully. Through the quavering fingers +that he swept suddenly across his brow two very genuine tears +glistened.</p> + +<p>With characteristic precipitousness Flame jumped to her feet.</p> + +<p>"Oh, darn Mr. Delcote!" she cried. "I'll feed your dogs, Christmas +Day! It won't take a minute after my own dinner or before! I'll run +like the wind! No one need ever know!"</p> + +<p>So it was that when Flame arrived at her own home fifteen minutes +later, and found her parents madly engaged in packing suit-cases, +searching time-tables, and rushing generally to and fro from attic to +cellar, no very mutual exchange of confidences ensued.</p> + +<p>"It's your Uncle Wally!" panted her Mother.</p> + +<p>"Another shock!" confided her Father.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Not such a bad one, either," explained her Mother. "But of course +we'll have to go! The very first thing in the morning! Christmas Day, +too! And leave you all alone! It's a perfect shame! But I've planned +it all out for everybody! Father's Lay Reader, of course, will take +the Christmas service! We'll just have to omit the Christmas Tree +surprise for the children!... It's lucky we didn't even unpack the +trimmings! Or tell a soul about it." In a hectic effort to pack both a +thick coat and a thin coat and a thick dress and a thin dress and +thick boots and thin boots in the same suit-case she began very +palpably to pant again. "Yes! Every detail is all planned out!" she +asserted with a breathy sort of pride. "You and your Father are both +so flighty I don't know whatever in the world you'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> do if I didn't +plan out everything for you!"</p> + +<p>With more manners than efficiency Flame and her Father dropped at once +every helpful thing they were doing and sat down in rocking chairs to +listen to the plan.</p> + +<p>"Flame, of course, can't stay here all alone. Flame's Mother turned +and confided <i>sotto voce</i> to her husband. Young men might call. The +Lay Reader is almost sure to call.... He's a dear delightful soul of +course, but I'm afraid he has an amorous eye."</p> + +<p>"All Lay Readers have amorous eyes," reflected her husband. "Taken all +in all it is a great asset."</p> + +<p>"Don't be flippant!" admonished Flame's Mother. "There are reasons ... +why I prefer that Flame's first offer of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> marriage should not be from +a Lay Reader."</p> + +<p>"Why?" brightened Flame.</p> + +<p>"S—sh—," cautioned her Father.</p> + +<p>"Very good reasons," repeated her Mother. From the conglomerate +packing under her hand a puff of spilled tooth-powder whiffed +fragrantly into the air.</p> + +<p>"Yes?" prodded her husband's blandly impatient voice.</p> + +<p>"Flame shall go to her Aunt Minna's" announced the dominant maternal +voice. "By driving with us to the station, she'll have only two hours +to wait for her train, and that will save one bus fare! Aunt Minna is +a vegetarian and doesn't believe in sweets either, so that will be +quite a unique and profitable experience for Flame to add to her +general culinary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> education! It's a wonderful house!... A bit dark of +course! But if the day should prove at all bright,—not so bright of +course that Aunt Minna wouldn't be willing to have the shades up, +but—Oh and Flame," she admonished still breathlessly, "I think you'd +better be careful to wear one of your rather longish skirts! And oh do +be sure to wipe your feet every time you come in! And don't chatter! +Whatever you do, don't chatter! Your Aunt Minna, you know, is just a +little bit peculiar! But such a worthy woman! So methodical! So...."</p> + +<p>To Flame's inner vision appeared quite suddenly the pale, inscrutable +face of the old Butler who asked nothing,—answered nothing,—welcomed +nothing,—evaded nothing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p> + +<p>"... Yes'm," said Flame.</p> + +<p>But it was a very frankly disconsolate little girl who stole late that +night to her Father's study, and perched herself high on the arm of +his chair with her cheek snuggled close to his.</p> + +<p>"Of Father-Funny," whispered Flame, "I've got such a queer little +pain."</p> + +<p>"A pain?" jerked her Father. "Oh dear me! Where is it? Go and find +your Mother at once!"</p> + +<p>"Mother?" frowned Flame. "Oh it isn't that kind of a pain.—It's in my +Christmas. I've got such a sad little pain in my Christmas."</p> + +<p>"Oh dear me—dear me!" sighed her Father. Like two people most +precipitously smitten with shyness they sat for a moment staring +blankly around the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> room at every conceivable object except each +other. Then quite suddenly they looked back at each other and smiled.</p> + +<p>"Father," said Flame. "You're not of course a very old man.... But +still you are pretty old, aren't you? You've seen a whole lot of +Christmasses, I mean?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," conceded her Father.</p> + +<p>From the great clumsy rolling collar of her blanket wrapper Flame's +little face loomed suddenly very pink and earnest.</p> + +<p>"But Father," urged Flame. "Did you ever in your whole life spend a +Christmas just exactly the way you wanted to? Honest-to-Santa Claus +now,—did you <i>ever</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Why—Why, no," admitted her Father after a second's hesitation. "Why +no, I don't believe I ever did." Quite frankly between his brows there +puckered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> a very black frown. "Now take to-morrow, for instance," he +complained. "I had planned to go fishing through the ice.... After the +morning service, of course,—after we'd had our Christmas dinner,—and +gotten tired of our presents,—every intention in the world I had of +going fishing through the ice.... And now your Uncle Wally has to go +and have a shock! I don't believe it was necessary. He should have +taken extra precautions. The least that delicate relatives can do is +to take extra precautions at holiday time.... Oh, of course your Uncle +Wally has books in his library," he brightened, "very interesting old +books that wouldn't be perfectly seemly for a minister of the Gospel +to have in his own library.... But still it's very disappointing," he +wilted again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I agree with you ... utterly, Father-Funny!" said Flame. "But ... +Father," she persisted, "Of all the people you know in the +world,—millions would it be?"</p> + +<p>"No, call it thousands" corrected her Father.</p> + +<p>"Well, thousands," accepted Flame. "Old people, young people, fat +people, skinnys, cross people, jolly people?... Did you ever in your +life know <i>any one</i> who had ever spent Christmas just the way he +wanted to?"</p> + +<p>"Why ... no, I don't know that I ever did," considered her Father. +With his elbows on the arms of his chair, his slender fingers forked +to a lovely Gothic arch above the bridge of his nose, he yielded +himself instantly to the reflection. "Why ... no, ... I don't know +that I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> ever did," he repeated with an increasing air of +conviction.... "When you're young enough to enjoy the day as a +'holler' day there's usually some blighting person who prefers to have +it observed as a holy day.... And by the time you reach an age where +you really rather appreciate its being a holy day the chances are that +you've got a houseful of racketty youngsters who fairly insist on +reverting to the 'holler' day idea again."</p> + +<p>"U—m—m," encouraged Flame.</p> + +<p>—"When you're little, of course," mused her Father, "you have to +spend the day the way your elders want you to!... You crave a +Christmas Tree but they prefer stockings! You yearn to skate but they +consider the weather better for corn-popping! You ask for a bicycle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +but they had already found a very nice bargain in flannels! You beg to +dine the gay-kerchiefed Scissor-Grinder's child, but they invite the +Minister's toothless mother-in-law!... And when you're old enough to +go courting," he sighed, "your lady-love's sentiments are outraged if +you don't spend the day with her and your own family are perfectly +furious if you don't spend the day with them!... And after you're +married?" With a gesture of ultimate despair he sank back into his +cushions. "N—o, no one, I suppose, in the whole world, has ever spent +Christmas just exactly the way he wanted to!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I," triumphed Flame, "have got a chance to spend Christmas just +exactly the way I want to!... The one chance perhaps in a life-time, +it would seem!...<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> No heart aches involved, no hurt feelings, no +disappointments for anybody! Nobody left out! Nobody dragged in! Why +Father-Funny," she cried. "It's an experience that might distinguish +me all my life long! Even when I'm very old and crumpled people would +point me out on the street and say '<i>There's</i> some one who once spent +Christmas just exactly the way she wanted to'!" To a limpness almost +unbelievable the eager little figure wilted down within its +blanket-wrapper swathings. "And now ..." deprecated Flame, "Mother has +gone and wished me on Aunt Minna instead!" With a sudden revival of +enthusiasm two small hands crept out of their big cuffs and clutched +her Father by the ears. "Oh Father-Funny!" pleaded Flame. "If you were +too old to want it for a 'holler' day and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> not quite old enough to +need it for a holy day ... so that all you asked in the world was just +to have it a <i>holly</i> day! Something all bright! Red and green! And +tinsel! and jingle-bells!... How would you like to have Aunt Minna +wished on you?... It isn't you know as though Aunt Minna was a—a +pleasant person," she argued with perfectly indisputable logic. "You +couldn't wish one 'A Merry Aunt Minna' any more than you could wish +'em a 'Merry Good Friday'!" From the clutch on his ears the small +hands crept to a point at the back of his neck where they encompassed +him suddenly in a crunching hug. "Oh Father-Funny!" implored Flame, +"You were a Lay Reader once! You must have had <i>very</i> amorous eyes! +Couldn't you <i>please</i> persuade Mother that..."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> + +<p>With a crisp flutter of skirts Flame's Mother, herself, appeared +abruptly in the door. Her manner was very excited.</p> + +<p>"Why wherever in the world have you people been?" she cried. "Are you +stone deaf? Didn't you hear the telephone? Couldn't you even hear me +calling? Your Uncle Wally is worse! That is he's better but he thinks +he's worse! And they want us to come at once! It's something about a +new will! The Lawyer telephoned! He advises us to come at once! +They've sent an automobile for us! It will be here any minute!... But +whatever in the world shall we do about Flame?" she cried +distractedly. "You know how Uncle Wally feels about having young +people in the house! And she can't possibly go to Aunt Minna's till +to-morrow! And...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p> + +<p>"But you see I'm not going to Aunt Minna's!" announced Flame quite +serenely. Slipping down from her Father's lap she stood with a round, +roly-poly flannel sort of dignity confronting both her parents. +"Father says I don't have to!"</p> + +<p>"Why, Flame!" protested her Father.</p> + +<p>"No, of course, you didn't say it with your mouth," admitted Flame. +"But you said it with your skin and bones!—I could feel it working."</p> + +<p>"Not go to your Aunt Minna's?" gasped her Mother. "What do you want to +do?... Stay at home and spend Christmas with the Lay Reader?"</p> + +<p>"When you and Father talk like that," murmured Flame with some +hauteur, "I don't know whether you're trying to run him down ... or +run him up."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Well, how do you feel about him yourself?" veered her Father quite +irrelevantly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I like him—some," conceded Flame. In her bright cheeks suddenly +an even brighter color glowed. "I like him when he leaves out the +Litany," she said. "I've told him I like him when he leaves out the +Litany.—He's leaving it out more and more I notice.—Yes, I like him +very much."</p> + +<p>"But this Aunt Minna business," veered back her Father suddenly. "What +<i>do</i> you want to do? That's just the question. What <i>do</i> you want to +do?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, what do you want to do?" panted her Mother.</p> + +<p>"I want to make a Christmas for myself!" said Flame. "Oh, of course, I +know perfectly well," she agreed, "that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> I could go to a dozen places +in the Parish and be cry-babied over for my presumable loneliness. And +probably I <i>should</i> cry a little," she wavered, "towards the +dessert—when the plum pudding came in and it wasn't like +Mother's.—But if I made a Christmas of my own—" she rallied +instantly. "Everything about it would be brand-new and unassociated! I +tell you I <i>want</i> to make a Christmas of my own! It's the chance of a +life-time! Even Father sees that it's the chance of a life-time!"</p> + +<p>"Do you?" demanded his wife a bit pointedly.</p> + +<p>"<i>Honk-honk!</i>" screamed the motor at the door.</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear me, whatever in the world shall I do?" cried Flame's Mother. +"I'm almost distracted! I'm—"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p> + +<p>"When in Doubt do as the Doubters do," suggested Flame's Father quite +genially. "Choose the most doubtful doubt on the docket and—Flame's got +a pretty level head," he interrupted himself very characteristically.</p> + +<p>"No young girl has a level heart," asserted Flame's Mother. "I'm so +worried about the Lay Reader."</p> + +<p>"Lay Reader?" murmured her Father. Already he had crossed the +threshold into the hall and was rummaging through an over-loaded hat +rack for his fur coat. "Why, yes," he called back, "I quite forgot to +ask. Just what kind of a Christmas is it, Flame, that you want to +make?" With unprecedented accuracy he turned at the moment to force +his wife's arms into the sleeves of her own fur coat.</p> + +<p>Twice Flame rolled up her cuffs and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> rolled them down again before she +answered.</p> + +<p>"I—I want to make a Surprise for Miss Flora," she confided.</p> + +<p>"<i>Honk-honk!</i>" urged the automobile.</p> + +<p>"For Miss Flora?" gasped her Mother.</p> + +<p>"Miss Flora?" echoed her Father.</p> + +<p>"Why, at the Rattle-Pane House, you know!" rallied Flame. "Don't you +remember that I called there this afternoon? It—it looked rather +lonely there.—I—think I could fix it."</p> + +<p>"Honk-honk-honk!" implored the automobile.</p> + +<p>"But who <i>is</i> this Miss Flora?" cried her Mother. "I never heard +anything so ridiculous in my life! How do we know she's respectable?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear," deprecated Flame's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> Father. "Just as though the owners +of the Rattle-Pane House would rent it to any one who wasn't +respectable!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, she's <i>very</i> respectable," insisted Flame. "Of a lineage so +distinguished—"</p> + +<p>"How old might this paragon be?" queried her Father.</p> + +<p>"Old?" puzzled Flame. To her startled mind two answers only presented +themselves.... Should she say "Oh, she's only just weaned," or +"Well,—she was invented about 1406?" Between these two dilemmas a +single compromise suggested itself. "She's <i>awfully</i> wrinkled," said +Flame; "that is—her face is. All wizened up, I mean."</p> + +<p>"Oh, then of course she <i>must</i> be respectable," twinkled Flame's +Father.</p> + +<p>"And is related in some way," per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>sisted Flame, "to Edward the +2nd—Duke of York."</p> + +<p>"Of that guarantee of respectability I am, of course, not quite so +sure," said her Father.</p> + +<p>With a temperish stamping of feet, an infuriate yank of the door-bell, +Uncle Wally's chauffeur announced that the limit of his endurance had +been reached.</p> + +<p>Blankly Flame's Mother stared at Flame's Father. Blankly Flame's +Father returned the stare.</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>p-l-e-a-s-e</i>!" implored Flame. Her face was crinkled like fine +crêpe.</p> + +<p>"Smooth out your nose!" ordered her Mother. On the verge of +capitulation the same familiar fear assailed her. "Will you promise +not to see the Lay Reader?" she bargained.</p> + +<p>"—Yes'm," said Flame.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II</h2> + +<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_02.jpg" alt="I" width="70" height="72" /></div> +<p>t's a dull person who doesn't wake up Christmas Morning with a +curiously ticklish sense of Tinsel in the pit of his stomach!—A sort +of a Shine! A kind of a Pain!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Glisten and Tears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pang of the years."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That's Christmas!</p> + +<p>So much was born on Christmas Day! So much has died! So much is yet to +come! Balsam-Scented, with the pulse of bells, how the senses sing! +Memories that wouldn't have batted an eye for all the Gabriel Trumpets in +Eternity leaping to life at the sound of a twopenny<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> horn! Merry Folk who +were with us once and are no more! Dream Folk who have never been with us +yet but will be some time! Ache of old carols! Zest of new-fangled games! +Flavor of puddings! Shine of silver and glass! The pleasant frosty smell of +the Express-man! The Gift Beautiful! The Gift Dutiful! The Gift that Didn't +Come! <i>Heigho</i>! Manger and Toy-Shop,—Miracle and Mirth,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Glisten and Tears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">LAUGH at the years!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>That's</i> Christmas!</p> + +<p>Flame Nourice certainly was willing to laugh at the years. Eighteen +usually is!</p> + +<p>Waking at Dawn two single thoughts consumed her,—the Lay Reader, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +the humpiest of the express packages downstairs.</p> + +<p>The Lay Reader's name was Bertrand. "Bertrand the Lay Reader," Flame +always called him. The rest of the Parish called him Mr. Laurello.</p> + +<p>It was the thought of Bertrand the Lay Reader that made Flame laugh +the most.</p> + +<p>"As long as I've promised most faithfully not to see him," she +laughed, "how can I possibly go to church? For the first Christmas in +my life," she laughed, "I won't have to go to church!"</p> + +<p>With this obligation so cheerfully canceled, the exploration of the +humpiest express package loomed definitely as the next task on the +horizon.</p> + +<p>Hoping for a fur coat from her Father, fearing for a set of +encyclope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>dias from her Mother, she tore back the wrappings with eager +hands only to find,—all-astonished, and half a-scream,—a gay, gauzy +layer of animal masks nosing interrogatively up at her. Less practical +surely than the fur coat,—more amusing, certainly, than +encyclopedias,—the funny "false faces" grinned up at her with a +curiously excitative audacity. Where from?—No identifying card! What +for? No conceivable clew!—Unless perhaps just on general principles a +donation for the Sunday School Christmas Tree?—But there wasn't going +to be any tree! Tentatively she reached into the box and touched the +fiercely striped face of a tiger, the fantastically exaggerated beak +of a red and green parrot. "U-m-m-m," mused Flame. "Whatever in the +world shall I do with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> them?" Then quite abruptly she sank back on her +heels and began to laugh and laugh and laugh. Even the Lay Reader had +not received such a laughing But even to herself she did not say just +what she was laughing at. It was a time for deeds, it would seem, and +not for words.</p> + +<p>Certainly the morning was very full of deeds!</p> + +<p>There was, of course, a present from her Mother to be opened,—warm, +woolly stockings and things like that. But no one was ever swerved +from an original purpose by trying on warm, woolly stockings. And from +her Father there was the most absurd little box no bigger than your +nose marked, "For a week in New York," and stuffed to the brim with +the sweetest bright green dollar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> bills. But, of course, you couldn't +try those on. And half the Parish sent presents. But no Parish ever +sent presents that needed to be tried on. No gay, fluffy scarfs,—no +lacey, frivolous pettiskirts,—no bright delaying hat-ribbons! Just +books,—illustrated poems usually, very wholesome pickles,—and always +a huge motto to recommend, "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men."—To +"Men"?—Why not to Women?—Why not at least to "<i>Dogs</i>?" questioned +Flame quite abruptly.</p> + +<p>Taken all in all it was not a Christmas Morning of sentiment but a +Christmas morning of <i>works</i>! Kitchen works, mostly! Useful, flavorous +adventures with a turkey! A somewhat nervous sally with an apple pie! +Intermittently, of course, a few experiments with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> flour paste! A +flaire or two with a paint brush! An errand to the attic! Interminable +giggles!</p> + +<p>Surely it was four o'clock before she was even ready to start for the +Rattle-Pane House. And "starting" is by no means the same as arriving. +Dragging a sledful of miscellaneous Christmas goods an eighth of a +mile over bare ground is not an easy task. She had to make three +tugging trips. And each start was delayed by her big gray pussy cat +stealing out to try to follow her. And each arrival complicated by the +yelpings and leapings and general cavortings of four dogs who didn't +see any reason in the world why they shouldn't escape from their +forced imprisonment in the shed-yard and prance home with her. Even +with the third start and the third ar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>rival finally accomplished, the +crafty cat stood waiting for her on the steps of the Rattle-Pane +House,—back arched, fur bristled, spitting like some new kind of +weather-cock at the storm in the shed-yard, and had to be thrust quite +unceremoniously into a much too small covered basket and lashed down +with yards and yards of tinsel that was needed quite definitely for +something else.—It isn't just the way of the Transgressor that's +hard.—Nobody's way is any too easy!</p> + +<p>The door-key, though, was exactly where the old Butler had said it +would be,—under the door mat, and the key itself turned astonishingly +cordially in the rusty old lock. Never in her whole little life having +owned a door-key to her own house it seemed quite an adventure in +itself to be walking thus possessively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> through an unfamiliar hall +into an absolutely unknown kitchen and goodness knew what on either +side and beyond.</p> + +<p>Perfectly simply too as the old Butler had promised, the four dog +dishes, heaping to the brim, loomed in prim line upon the kitchen +table waiting for distribution.</p> + +<p>"U-m-m," sniffed Flame. "Nothing but mush! <i>Mush</i>!—All over the world +to-day I suppose—while their masters are feasting at other people's +houses on puddings and—and cigarettes! How the poor darlings must +suffer! Locked in sheds! Tied in yards! Stuffed down cellar!"</p> + +<p>"Me-o-w," twinged a plaintive hint from the hallway just outside.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but cats are different," argued Flame. "So soft, so plushy, so +spine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>less! Cats were <i>meant</i> to be stuffed into things."</p> + +<p>Without further parleying she doffed her red tam and sweater, donned a +huge white all-enveloping pinafore, and started to ameliorate as best +she could the Christmas sufferings of the "poor darlings" immediately +at hand.</p> + +<p>It was at least a yellow kitchen,—or had been once. In all that gray, +dank, neglected house, the one suggestion of old sunshine.</p> + +<p>"We shall have our dinner here," chuckled Flame. "After the carols—we +shall have our dinner here."</p> + +<p>Very boisterously in the yard just outside the window the four dogs +scuffled and raced for sheer excitement and joy at this most +unexpected advent of human companionship. Intermittently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> from time to +time by the aid of old boxes or barrels they clawed their way up to +the cobwebby window-sill to peer at the strange proceedings. +Intermittently from time to time they fell back into the frozen yard +in a chaos of fur and yelps.</p> + +<p>By five o'clock certainly the faded yellow kitchen must have looked +very strange, even to a dog!</p> + +<p>Straight down its dingy, wobbly-floored center stretched a long table +cheerfully spread with "the Rev. Mrs. Flamande Nourice's" second best +table cloth. Quaint high-backed chairs dragged in from the shadowy +parlor circled the table. A pleasant china plate gleamed like a +hand-painted moon before each chair. At one end of the table loomed a +big brown turkey; at the other, the appropriate vegetables. Pies, +cakes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> and doughnuts, interspersed themselves between. Green wreaths +streaming with scarlet ribbons hung nonchalantly across every +chair-top. Tinsel garlands shone on the walls. In the doorway reared a +hastily constructed mimicry of a railroad crossing sign.</p> +<div class="center"><img src="images/image_04.jpg" alt="Illustration" width="400" height="437" /></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p> + +<p>Directly opposite and conspicuously placed above the rusty stove-pipe +stretched the Parish's Gift Motto—duly re-adjusted.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Peace</i> on <i>Earth</i>, Good Will to <i>Dogs</i>."</p></div> + +<p>"Fatuously silly," admitted Flame even to herself. "But yet it does +add something to the Gayety of Rations!"</p> + +<p>Stepping aside for a single thrilling moment to study the full effect +of her handiwork, the first psychological puzzle of her life smote +sharply across her senses. Namely, that you never really get the whole +fun out of anything unless you are absolutely alone.—But the very +first instant you find yourself absolutely alone with a +Really-Good-Time you begin to twist and turn and hunt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> about for +somebody Very Special to share it with you!</p> + +<p>The only "Very Special" person that Flame could think of was "Bertrand +the Lay Reader."</p> + +<p>All a-blush with the sheer mental surprise of it she fled to the shed +door to summon the dogs.</p> + +<p>"Maybe even the dogs won't come!" she reasoned hectically. "Maybe +nothing will come! Maybe that's always the way things happen when you +get your own way about something else!"</p> + +<p>Like a blast from the Arctic the Christmas twilight swept in on her. +It crisped her cheeks,—crinkled her hair! Turned her spine to a wisp +of tinsel! All outdoors seemed suddenly creaking with frost! All +indoors, with <i>unknownness</i>!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Come, Beautiful-Lovely!" she implored. "Come, Lopsy! Miss Flora! +Come, Blunder-Blot!'"</p> + +<p>But there was really no need of entreaty. A turn of the door-knob would +have brought them! Leaping, loping, four abreast, they came plunging +like so many North Winds to their party! Streak of Snow,—Glow of +Fire,—Frozen Mud—Sun-Spot!—Yelping-mouthed—slapping-tailed! Backs +bristling! Legs stiffening! Wolf Hound, Setter, Bull Dog, +Dalmatian,—each according to his kind, hurtling, crowding!</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear me, dear me," struggled Flame. "Maybe a carol would calm +them."</p> + +<p>To a certain extent a carol surely did. The hair-cloth parlor of the +Rattle-Pane House would have calmed anything. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> the mousey smell of +the old piano fairly jerked the dogs to its senile old ivory keyboard. +Cocking their ears to its quavering treble notes,—snorting their +nostrils through its gritty guttural basses, they watched Flame's +facile fingers sweep from sound to sound.</p> + +<p>"Oh, what a—glorious lark!" quivered Flame. "What a—a <i>lonely</i> +glorious lark!"</p> + +<p>Timidly at first but with an increasing abandon, half laughter and +half tears, the clear young soprano voice took up its playful +paraphrase,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"God rest you merrie—animals!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let nothing you dismay!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>caroled Flame.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"For—"</p></div> + +<p>It was just at this moment that Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf +Hound,—muz<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>zled lifted, eyes rolling, jabbed his shrill nose into +space and harmony with a carol of his own,—octaves of agony,—Heaven +knows what of ecstasy,—that would have hurried an owl to its nest, a +ghoul to a moving picture show!</p> + +<p>"Wow-Wow—<i>Wow</i>!" caroled Beautiful-Lovely. +"Ww—ow—Ww—ow—<i>Ww—Oo—Wwwww</i>!"</p> + +<p>As Flame's hands dropped from the piano the unmistakable creak of red +wheels sounded on the frozen driveway just outside.</p> + +<p>No one but "Bertrand the Lay Reader" drove a buggy with red wheels! To +the infinite scandalization of the Parish—no one but "Bertrand the +Lay Reader" drove a buggy with red wheels!—Fleet steps sounded +suddenly on the path! Startled fists beat furiously on the door!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What is it? What is it?" shouted a familiar voice. "Whatever in the +world is happening? Is it <i>murder</i>? Let me in! <i>Let me in!</i>"</p> + +<p>"Sil—ly!" hissed Flame through a crack in the door. "It's nothing but +a party! Don't you know a—a party when you hear it?"</p> + +<p>For an instant only, blank silence greeted her confidence. Then +"Bertrand the Lay Reader" relaxed in an indisputably genuine gasp of +astonishment.</p> + +<p>"Why! Why, is that you, Miss Flame?" he gasped. "Why, I thought it was +a murder! Why—Why, whatever in the world are you doing here?"</p> + +<p>"I—I'm having a party," hissed Flame through the key-hole.</p> + +<p>"A—a—party?" stammered the Lay Reader. "Open the door!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No, I—can't," said Flame.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" demanded the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>Helplessly in the darkness of the vestibule Flame looked up,—and +down,—and sideways,—but met always in every direction the memory of +her promise.</p> + +<p>"I—I just can't," she admitted a bit weakly. "It wouldn't be +convenient.—I—I've got trouble with my eyes."</p> + +<p>"Trouble with your eyes?" questioned the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"I didn't go away with my Father and Mother," confided Flame.</p> + +<p>"No,—so I notice," observed the Lay Reader. "<i>Please</i> open the door!"</p> + +<p>"Why?" parried Flame.</p> + +<p>"I've been looking for you everywhere," urged the Lay Reader. "At the +Senior Warden's! At all the Vestry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>men's houses! Even at the Sexton's! +I knew you didn't go away! The Garage Man told me there were only +two!—I thought surely I'd find you at your own house.—But I only +found sled tracks."</p> + +<p>"That was me,—I," mumbled Flame.</p> + +<p>"And then I heard these awful screams," shuddered the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"That was a Carol," said Flame.</p> + +<p>"A Carol?" scoffed the Lay Reader. "Open the door!"</p> + +<p>"Well—just a crack," conceded Flame.</p> + +<p>It was astonishing how a man as broad-shouldered as the Lay Reader +could pass so easily through a crack.</p> + +<p>Conscience-stricken Flame fled before him with her elbow crooked +across her forehead.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my eyes! My eyes!" she cried.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Well, really," puzzled the Lay Reader. "Though I claim, of course, to +be ordinarily bright—I had never suspected myself of being actually +dazzling."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're not bright at all," protested Flame. "It's just my +promise.—I promised Mother not to see you!"</p> + +<p>"Not to see <i>me</i>?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was astonishing how +almost instantaneously a man as purely theoretical as the Lay Reader +was supposed to be, thought of a perfectly practical solution to the +difficulty. "Why—why we might tie my big handkerchief across your +eyes," he suggested. "Just till we get this mystery straightened +out.—Surely there is nothing more or less than just plain +righteousness in—that!"</p> + +<p>"What a splendid idea!" capitulated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> Flame. "But, of course, if I'm +absolutely blindfolded," she wavered for a second only, "you'll have +to lead me by the hand."</p> + +<p>"I could do that," admitted the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>With the big white handkerchief once tied firmly across her eyes, +Flame's last scruple vanished.</p> + +<p>"Well, you see," she began quite precipitously, "I <i>did</i> think it +would be such fun to have a party!—A party all my own, I mean!—A +party just exactly as I wanted it! No Parish in it at all! Or good +works! Or anything! Just <i>fun</i>!—And as long as Mother and Father had +to go away anyway—" Even though the blinding bandage the young eyes +seemed to lift in a half wistful sort of appeal. "You see there's some +sort of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> property involved," she confided quite impulsively. "Uncle +Wally's making a new will. There's a corn-barn and a private chapel +and a collection of Chinese lanterns and a piebald pony principally +under dispute.—Mother, of course thinks we ought to have the +corn-barn. But Father can't decide between the Chinese lanterns and +the private chapel.—Personally," she sighed, "I'm hoping for the +piebald pony."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but this—party?" prodded the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes,—the party—" quickened Flame.</p> + +<p>"Why have it in a deserted house?" questioned the Lay Reader with some +incisiveness.</p> + +<p>Even with her eyes closely bandaged Flame could see perfectly clearly +that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> the Lay Reader was really quite troubled.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but you see it isn't exactly a deserted house," she explained.</p> + +<p>"Who lives here?" demanded the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"I don't know—exactly," admitted Flame. "But the Butler is a friend +of mine and—"</p> + +<p>"The—Butler is a friend of yours?" gasped the Lay Reader. Already, if +Flame could only have seen it, his head was cocked with sudden +intentness towards the parlor door. "There is certainly something very +strange about all this," he whispered a bit hectically. "I could +almost have sworn that I heard a faint scuffle,—the horrid sound of a +person—strangling."</p> + +<p>"Strangling?" giggled Flame. "Oh,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> that is just the sound of Miss +Flora's 'girlish glee'! If she'd only be content to chew the corner of +the piano cover! But when she insists on inhaling it, too!"</p> + +<p>"Miss Flora?" gasped the Lay Reader. "Is this a Mad House?"</p> + +<p>"Miss Flora is a—a dog," confided Flame a bit coolly. "I +neglected—it seems—to state that this is a dog-party that I'm +having."</p> + +<p>"<i>Dogs</i>?" winced the Lay Reader. "Will they bite?"</p> + +<p>"Only if you don't trust them," confided Flame.</p> + +<p>"But it's so hard to trust a dog that will bite you if you don't trust +him," frowned the Lay Reader. "It makes such a sort of a—a vicious +circle, as it were."</p> + +<p>"Vicious Circe?" mused Flame, a bit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> absent-mindedly. "No, I don't +think it's nice at all to call Miss Flora a 'Vicious Circe.'" It was +Flame's turn now to wince back a little. "I—I hate people who hate +dogs!" she cried out quite abruptly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't hate them," lied the Lay Reader like a gentleman, "it's +only that—that—. You see a dog bit me once!" he confided with +significant emphasis.</p> + +<p>"I—bit a dentist—once," mused Flame without any emphasis at all.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but I say, Miss Flame," deprecated the Lay Reader. "That's +different! When a dog bites you, you know, there's always more or less +question whether he was mad or not."</p> + +<p>"There doesn't seem to have been any question at all," mused Flame, +"that <i>you</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> were mad! Did you have <i>your</i> head sent off to be +investigated or anything?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," implored the Lay Reader, "I tell you I <i>like</i> +dogs,—good dogs! I assure you I'm very—oh, very much interested in +this dog party of yours! Such a quaint idea! So—so—! If I could be +of any possible assistance?" he implored.</p> + +<p>"Maybe you could be," relaxed Flame ever so faintly. "But if you're +really coming to my party," she stiffened again, "you've got to behave +like my party!"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course I'll behave like your party!" laughed the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"There <i>is</i> a problem," admitted Flame. "Five problems, to be +perfectly accurate.—Four dogs, and a cat in the wood-shed."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And a cat in the wood-shed?" echoed the Lay Reader quite idiotically.</p> + +<p>"The table is set," affirmed Flame. "The places, all ready!—But I +don't know how to get the dogs into their chairs!—They run around so! +They yelp! They jump!—They haven't had a mouthful to eat, you see, +since last night, this time!—And when they once see the turkey +I'm—I'm afraid they'll stampede it."</p> + +<p>"Turkey?" quizzed the Lay Reader who had dined that day on corned +beef.</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course, mush was what they were intended to have," admitted +Flame. "Piles and piles of mush! Extra piles and piles of mush I +should judge because it was Christmas Day!... But don't you think mush +does seem a bit dull?" she questioned appealingly. "For Christmas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> +Day? Oh, I did think a turkey would taste so good!"</p> + +<p>"It certainly would," conceded the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"So if you'd help me—" wheedled Flame, "it would be well-worth +staying blindfolded for.... For, of course, I shall have to stay +blindfolded. But I can see a little of the floor," she admitted, +"though I couldn't of course break my promise to my Mother by seeing +you."</p> + +<p>"No, certainly not," admitted the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"Otherwise—" murmured Flame with a faint gesture towards the door.</p> + +<p>"I will help you," said the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"Where is your hand?" fumbled Flame.</p> + +<p>"<i>Here</i>!" attested the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"Lead us to the dogs!" commanded Flame.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p> + +<p>Now the Captain of a ship feels genuinely obligated, it would seem, to +go down with his ship if tragic circumstances so insist. But he +never,—so far as I've ever heard, felt the slightest obligation +whatsoever to go down with another captain's ship,—to be martyred in +short for any job not distinctly his own. So Bertrand Lorello,—who +for the cause he served, wouldn't have hesitated an instant probably, +to be torn by Hindoo lions,—devoured by South Sea cannibals,—fallen +upon by a chapel spire,—trampled to death even at a church rummage +sale,—saw no conceivable reason at the moment for being eaten by dogs +at a purely social function.</p> + +<p>Even groping through a balsam-scented darkness with one hand clasping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> +the thrilly fingers of a lovely young girl, this distaste did not +altogether leave him.</p> + +<p>"This—this mush that you speak of?" he questioned quite abruptly. +"With the dogs as—as nervous as you say,—so unfortunately liable to +stampede? Don't you think that perhaps a little mush served first,—a +good deal of mush I would say, served first,—might act as a—as a +sort of anesthetic?... Somewhere in the past I am almost sure I have +read that mush in sufficient quantities, you understand, is really +quite a—quite an anesthetic."</p> + +<p>Very palpably in the darkness he heard a single throaty swallow.</p> + +<p>"Lead us to the—mush," said Flame.</p> + +<p>In another instant the door-knob turned in his hand, and the cheerful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +kitchen lamp-light,—glitter of tinsel,—flare of red ribbons,—savor +of foods, smote sharply on him.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say, how <i>jolly</i>!" cried the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"Don't let me bump into anything!" begged the blindfolded Flame, still +holding tight to his hand.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," kindled the entranced Lay Reader, "it's <i>you</i> +that look the jolliest! All in white that way! I've never seen you +wear <i>that</i> to church, have I?"</p> + +<p>"This is a pinafore," confided Flame coolly. "A bungalow apron, the +fashion papers call it.... No, you've never seen me wear—this to +church."</p> + +<p>"O—h," said the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"Get the mush," said Flame.</p> + +<p>"The what?" asked the Lay Reader.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It's there on the table by the window," gestured Flame. "Please set +all four dishes on the floor,—each dish, of course, in a separate +corner," ordered Flame. "There is a reason.... And then open the +parlor door."</p> + +<p>"Open the parlor door?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was no mere +grammatical form of speech but a real query in the Lay Reader's mind.</p> + +<p>"Well, maybe I'd better," conceded Flame. "Lead me to it."</p> + +<p>Roused into frenzy by the sound of a stranger's step, a stranger's +voice, the four dogs fumed and seethed on the other side of the panel.</p> + +<p>"Sniff—Sniff—<i>Snort</i>!" the Red Setter sucked at the crack in the +door.</p> + +<p>"Woof! Woof! <i>Woof</i>!" roared the big Wolf Hound.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Slam! Bang! Slash!" slapped the Dalmatian's crisp weight.</p> + +<p>"Yi! Yi! Yi!" sang the Bull Dog.</p> + +<p>"Hush! <i>Hush</i>, Dogs!" implored Flame. "This is Father's Lay Reader!"</p> + +<p>"Your—Lay Reader!" contradicted the young man gallantly. It <i>was</i> +pretty gallant of him, wasn't it? Considering everything?</p> + +<p>In another instant four <i>shapes</i> with teeth in them came hurtling +through!</p> + +<p>If Flame had never in her life admired the Lay Reader she certainly +would have admired him now for the sheer cold-blooded foresight which +had presaged the inevitable reaction of the dogs upon the mush and the +mush upon the dogs. With a single sniff at his heels, a prod of paws +in his stomach, the onslaught swerved—and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> passed. Guzzlingly from +four separate corners of the room issued sounds of joy and +fulfillment.</p> + +<p>With an impulse quite surprising even to herself Flame thrust both +hands into the Lay Reader's clasp.</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> nice, aren't you?" she quickened. In an instant of weakness +one hand crept up to the blinding bandage, and recovered its honor as +instantly. "Oh, I do wish I <i>could</i> see you," sighed Flame. "You're so +good-looking! Even Mother thinks you're <i>so</i> good-looking!... Though +she does get awfully worked up, of course, about your 'amorous eyes'!"</p> + +<p>"Does your Mother think I've got ... 'amorous eyes'?" asked the Lay +Reader a bit tersely. Behind his spectacles as he spoke the orbs in +question softened and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> glowed like some rare exotic bloom under glass. +"Does your Mother ... think I've got amorous eyes?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes!" said Flame.</p> + +<p>"And your Father?" drawled the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"Why, Father says <i>of course</i> you've got 'amorous eyes'!" confided +Flame with the faintest possible tinge of surprise at even being asked +such a question. "That's the funny thing about Mother and Father," +chuckled Flame. "They're always saying the same thing and meaning +something entirely different by it. Why, when Mother says with her +mouth all pursed up, 'I have every reason to believe that Mr. Lorello +is engaged to the daughter of the Rector in his former Parish,' Father +just puts back his head and howls, and says, 'Why, <i>of course</i>, Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +Lorello is engaged to the daughter of the Rector in his former Parish! +All Lay Readers...."</p> + +<p>In the sudden hush that ensued a faint sense of uneasiness flickered +through Flame's shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Is it you that have hushed? Or the dogs?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"The dogs," said the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>Very cautiously, absolutely honorably, Flame turned her back to the +Lay Reader, and lifted the bandage just far enough to prove the Lay +Reader's assertion.</p> + +<p>Bulging with mush the four dogs lay at rest on rounding sides with +limp legs straggling, or crouched like lions' heads on paws, with +limpid eyes blinking above yawny mouths.</p> + +<p>"O—h," crooned Flame. "How sweet! Only, of course, with what's to +follow,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> she regretted thriftily, "it's an awful waste of mush.... +Excelsior warmed in the oven would have served just as well."</p> + +<p>At the threat of a shadow across her eyeball she jerked the bandage +back into place.</p> + +<p>"Now, Mr. Lorello," she suggested blithely, "if you'll get the +Bibles...."</p> + +<p>"Bibles?" stiffened the Lay Reader. "Bibles? Why, really, Miss Flame, +I couldn't countenance any sort of mock service! Even just for—for +quaintness,—even for Christmas quaintness!"</p> + +<p>"Mock service?" puzzled Flame. "Bibles?... Oh, I don't want you to +preach out of 'em," she hastened perfectly amiably to explain. "All I +want them for is to plump-up the chairs.... The seats you see are too +low for the dogs.... Oh, I suppose dictionaries would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> do," she +compromised reluctantly. "Only dictionaries are always so scarce."</p> + +<p>Obediently the Lay Reader raked the parlor book-cases for +"plump-upable" books. With real dexterity he built Chemistries on +Sermons and Ancient Poems on Cook Books till the desired heights were +reached.</p> + +<p>For a single minute more Flame took another peep at the table.</p> + +<p>"Set a chair for yourself directly opposite me!" she ordered. For +sheer hilarious satisfaction her feet began to dance and her hands to +clap. "And whenever I really feel obliged to look," she sparkled, +"you'll just have to leave the table, that's all!... And now...?" +Appraisingly her muffled eye swept the shining vista. "Perfect!" she +triumphed. "Perfect!" Then quite abruptly the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> eager mouth wilted. +"Why ... Why I've forgotten the carving knife and fork!" she cried out +in real distress. "Oh, how stupid of me!" Arduously, but without +avail, she searched through all the drawers and cupboards of the +Rattle-Pane kitchen. A single alternative occurred to her. "You'll +have to go over to my house and get them,—Mr. Lorello!" she said. +"Were you ever in my kitchen? Or my pantry?"</p> + +<p>"No," admitted the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"Well, you'll have to climb in through the window—someway," worried +Flame. "I've mislaid my key somewhere here among all these dishes and +boxes. And the pantry," she explained very explicitly, "is the third +door on the right as you enter.... You'll see a chest of drawers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +Open the second of 'em.... Or maybe you'd better look through all of +them.... Only please ... please hurry!" Imploringly the little head +lifted.</p> + +<p>"If I hurry enough," said the Lay Reader quite impulsively, "may I +have a kiss when I get back?"</p> + +<p>"A kiss?" hooted Flame. In the curve of her cheek a dimple opened +suddenly. "Well ... maybe," said Flame.</p> + +<p>As though the word were wings the Lay Reader snatched his hat and sped +out into the night.</p> + +<p>It was astonishing how all the warm housey air seemed to rush out with +him, and all the shivery frost rush back.</p> + +<p>A little bit listlessly Flame dragged down the bandage from her eyes.</p> + +<p>"It must be the creaks on the stairs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> that make it so awfully lonely +all of a sudden," argued Flame. "It must be because the dogs snore +so.... No mere man could make it so empty." With a precipitous nudge +of the memory she dashed to the door and helloed to the fast +retreating figure. "Oh, Bertrand! Bertrand!" she called, "I got sort +of mixed up. It's the second door on the left! And if you don't find +'em there you'd better go up in Mother's room and turn out the silver +chest! <i>Hurry</i>!"</p> + +<p>Rallying back to the bright Christmas kitchen for the real business at +hand, an accusing blush rose to the young spot where the dimple had +been.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Shucks!" parried Flame. "I kissed a Bishop before I was +five!—What's a Lay Reader?" As one hu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>manely willing to condone the +future as well as the past she rolled up her white sleeves without +further introspection, and dragged out from the protecting shadow of +the sink the "humpiest box" which had so excited her emotions at home +in an earlier hour of the day. Cracklingly under her eager fingers the +clumsy cover slid off, exposing once more to her enraptured gaze the +gay-colored muslin layer of animal masks leering fatuously up at her.</p> + +<p>Only with her hand across her mouth did she keep from crying out. Very +swiftly her glance traveled from the grinning muslin faces before her +to the solemn fur faces on the other side of the room. The hand across +her mouth tightened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why, it's something like Creation," she giggled. "This having to +decide which face to give to which animal!"</p> + +<p>As expeditiously as possible she made her selection.</p> + +<p>"Poor Miss Flora must be so tired of being so plain," she thought. +"I'll give her the first choice of everything! Something really +lovely! It can't help resting her!"</p> + +<p>With this kind idea in mind she selected for Miss Flora a canary's +face.—Softly yellow! Bland as treacle! Its swelling, tender muslin +throat fairly reeking with the suggestion of innocent song! No one +gazing once upon such ornithological purity would ever speak a harsh +word again, even to a sparrow!</p> + +<p>Nudging Miss Flora cautiously from her sonorous nap, Flame beguiled +her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> with half a doughnut to her appointed chair, boosted her still +cautiously to her pinnacle of books, and with various swift +adjustments of fasteners, knotting of tie-strings,—an extra breathing +hole jabbed through the beak, slipped the canary's beautiful blond +countenance over Miss Flora's frankly grizzled mug.</p> + +<p>For a single terrifying instant Miss Flora's crinkled sides +tightened,—a snarl like ripped silk slipped through her straining +lungs. Then once convinced that the mask was not a gas-box she +accepted the liberty with reasonable <i>sang-froid</i> and sat blinking +beadily out through the canary's yellow-rimmed eye-sockets with frank +curiosity towards such proceedings as were about to follow. It was +easy to see she was accustomed to sitting in chairs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> + +<p>For the Wolf Hound Flame chose a Giraffe's head. Certain anatomical +similarities seemed to make the choice wise. With a long vividly +striped stockinet neck wrinkling like a mousquetaire glove, the neat +small head that so closely fitted his own neat small head, the +tweaked, interrogative ears,—Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf Hound, reared +up majestically in his own chair. He also, once convinced that the +mask was not a gas-box, resigned himself to the inevitable, and +corporeally independent of such vain props as Chemistries or Sermons, +lolled his fine height against the mahogany chair-back.</p> + +<p>To Blunder-Blot, the trim Dalmatian, Flame assigned the Parrot's head, +arrogantly beaked, gorgeously variegated, altogether querulous.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p> + +<p>For Lopsy, the crafty Setter, she selected a White Rabbit's artless, +pink-eared visage.</p> + +<p>Yet out of the whole box of masks it had been the Bengal Tiger's +fiercely bewhiskered visage that had fascinated Flame the most. +Regretfully from its more or less nondescript companions, she picked +up the Bengal Tiger now and pulled at its real, bristle-whiskers. In +one of the chairs a dog stirred quite irrelevantly. Cocking her own +head towards the wood-shed Flame could not be perfectly sure whether +she heard a twinge of cat or a twinge of conscience. The unflinching +glare of the Bengal Tiger only served to increase her self-reproach.</p> + +<p>"After all," reasoned Flame, "it would be easy enough to set another +place! And pile a few extra books!... I'm almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> sure I saw a black +plush bag in the parlor.... If the cat could be put in something like +a black plush bag,—something perfectly enveloping like that? So that +not a single line of its—its figure could be observed?... And it had +a new head given it? A perfectly sufficient head—like a Bengal +Tiger?—I see no reason why—"</p> + +<p>In five minutes the deed was accomplished. Its lovely sinuous "figure" +reduced to the stolid contour of a black plush work-bag, its small +uneasy head thrust into the roomy muslin cranium of the Bengal Tiger, +the astonished Cat found herself slumping soggily on a great teetering +pile of books, staring down as best she might through the Bengal +Tiger's ear at the weirdest assemblage of animals which any domestic +cat of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> acquaintance had ever been forced to contemplate.</p> + +<p>Coincidental with the appearance of the Cat a faint thrill passed +through the rest of the company.... Nothing very much! No more, no +less indeed, than passes through any company at the introduction of +purely extraneous matter. From the empty plate which she had +commandeered as a temporary pillow the Yellow Canary lifted an +interrogative beak.... That was all! At Flame's left, the White-Haired +Rabbit emitted an incongruous bark.... Scarcely worth reporting! +Across the table the Giraffe thumped a white, plumy tail. Thoughtfully +the Parrot's hooked nose slanted slightly to one side.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I wish Bertrand would come!" fretted Flame. "Maybe this time +he'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> notice my 'Christmas Crossing' sign!" she chuckled with sudden +triumph. "Talk about surprises!" Very diplomatically as she spoke she +broke another doughnut in two and drew all the dogs' attention to +herself. Almost hysterical with amusement she surveyed the scene +before her. "Well, at least we can have 'grace' before the Preacher +comes!" she laughed. A step on the gravel walk startled her suddenly. +In a flash she had jerked down the blind-folding handkerchief across +her eyes again, and folding her hands and the doughnut before her +burst softly into paraphrase.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Now we—sit us down to eat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thrice our share of Flesh and Sweet.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If we should burst before we're through,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh what in—Dogdom shall we do?'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Thus it was that the Master of the House, returning unexpectedly to +his un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>familiar domicile, stumbled upon a scene that might have shaken +the reason of a less sober young man.</p> + +<p>Startled first by the unwonted illumination from his kitchen windows, +and second by the unprecedented aroma of Fir Balsam that greeted him +even through the key-hole of his new front door, his feelings may well +be imagined when groping through the dingy hall he first beheld the +gallows-like structure reared in the kitchen doorway.</p> + +<p>"My God!" he ejaculated, "Barrett is getting ready to hang himself! +Gone mad probably—or something!"</p> + +<p>Curdled with horror he forced himself to the object, only to note with +convulsive relief but increasing bewilderment the cheerful phrasing +and ultimate intent of the structure itself. "'Christmas Cross<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>ing'?" +he repeated blankly. "'Look out for Surprises'?—'Shop, Cook, and +Glisten'?" With his hand across his eyes he reeled back slightly +against the wall. "It is I that have gone mad!" he gasped.</p> + +<p>A little uncertain whether he was afraid of What-He-Was-About-to-See, +or whether What-He-Was-About-to-See ought to be afraid of him, he +craned his neck as best he could round the corner of the huge buffet +that blocked the kitchen vista. A fresh bewilderment met his eyes. +Where he had once seen cobwebs flapping grayly across the +chimney-breast loomed now the gay worsted recommendation that <i>dogs +specially</i>, should be considered in the Christmas Season. Throwing all +caution aside he passed the buffet and plunged into the kitchen.</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>do</i> hurry!" cried an eager young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> voice. "I thought my hair +would be white before you came!"</p> + +<p>Like a man paralyzed he stopped short in his tracks to stare at the +scene before him! The long, bright table! The absolutely formal food! +A blindfolded girl! A perfectly strange blindfolded girl ... with her +dark hair forty years this side of white—<i>begging him to hurry</i>!... A +Black Velvet Bag surmounted by a Tiger's head stirring strangely in a +chair piled high with books!... Seated next to the Black Velvet Bag a +Canary as big as a Turkey Gobbler!... A Giraffe stepping suddenly +forward with—with dog-paws thrust into his soup plate!... A White +Rabbit heavily wreathed in holly rousing cautiously from his +cushions!... A Parrot with a twitching black and white short-haired +tail!... An<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> empty chair facing the Girl! <i>An empty chair facing the +Girl.</i></p> + +<p>"If this is <i>madness</i>," thought Delcote quite precipitously, "I am at +least the Master of the Asylum!"</p> + +<p>In another instant, with a prodigious stride he had slipped into the +vacant seat.</p> + +<p>"... So sorry to have kept you waiting," he murmured.</p> + +<p>At the first sound of that unfamiliar voice, Flame yanked the +handkerchief from her eyes, took one blank glance at the Stranger, and +burst forth into a muffled, but altogether blood-curdling scream.</p> + +<p>"Oh ... Oh ... Owwwwwwww!" said the scream.</p> + +<p>As though waiting only for that one signal to break the spell of their +enchantment, the Canary leaped upward and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> grabbed the Bengal Tiger by +his muslin nose,—the White Rabbit sprang to "point" on the cooling +turkey, and the Red and Green Parrot fell to the floor in a desperate +effort to settle once and for all with the black spot that itched so +impulsively on his left shoulder!</p> + +<p>For a moment only, in comparative quiet, the Concerned struggled with +the Concerned. Then true to all Dog Psychology,—absolutely +indisputable, absolutely unalterable, the Non-Concerned leaped in upon +the Non-Concerned! Half on his guard, but wholely on his itch, the +jostled Parrot shot like a catapult across the floor! Lost to all +sense of honor or table-manners the benign-faced Giraffe with his +benign face still towering blandly in the air, burst through his own +neck with a most curious anatomical effect,—locked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> his teeth in the +Parrot's gay throat and rolled with him under the table in mortal +combat!</p> + +<p>Round and round the room spun the Yellow Canary and the Black Plush +Bag!</p> + +<p>Retreating as best she could from her muslin nose,—the Bengal Tiger +or rather that which was within the Bengal Tiger, waged her war for +Freedom! Ripping like a chicken through its shell she succeeded at +last in hatching one front paw and one hind paw into action. +Wallowing,—stumbling,—rolling,—yowling,—she humped from +mantle-piece to chair-top, and from box to table.</p> + +<p>Loyally the rabbit-eared Setter took up the chase. Mauled in the +scuffle he ran with his meek face upside down! Lost to all reason, +defiant of all morale, he proceeded to flush the game!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p> + +<p>Dish-pans clattered, stools tipped over, pictures banged on the walls!</p> + +<p>From her terrorized perch on the back of her chair Flame watched the +fracas with dilated eyes.</p> + +<p>Hunched in the hug of his own arms the Stranger sat rocking himself to +and fro in uncontrollable, choking mirth,—"ribald mirth" was what +Flame called it.</p> + +<p>"Stop!" she begged. "Stop it! Somebody <i>stop</i> it!"</p> + +<p>It was not until the Black Plush Bag at bay had ripped a red streak +down Miss Flora's avid nose that the Stranger rose to interfere.</p> + +<p>Very definitely then, with quick deeds, incisive words, he separated +the immediate combatants, and ordered the other dogs into submission.</p> + +<p>"Here you, Demon Direful!" he ad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>dressed the white Wolf Hound. "Drop +that, Orion!" he shouted to the Irish Setter. "Cut it out, John!" he +thundered at the Coach Dog.</p> + +<p>"Their names are 'Beautiful-Lovely'!" cried Flame. "And 'Lopsy!' and +'Blunder-Blot!'"</p> + +<p>With his hand on the Wolf Hound's collar, the Stranger stopped and +stared up with frank astonishment, not to say resentment, at the +girl's interference.</p> + +<p>"Their names are <i>what</i>?" he said.</p> + +<p>Something in the special intonation of the question infuriated +Flame.... Maybe she thought his mouth scornful,—his narrowing +eyes...? Goodness knows what she thought of his suddenly narrowing +eyes!</p> + +<p>In an instant she had jumped from her retreat to the floor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Who are you, anyway?" she demanded. "How dare you come here like +this? Butting into my party!... And—and spoiling my discipline with +the dogs! Who are you, I say?"</p> + +<p>With Demon Direful, alias Beautiful-Lovely tugging wildly at his +restraint, the Stranger's scornful mouth turned precipitously up, +instead of down.</p> + +<p>"Who am I?" he said. "Why, no one special at all except just—the +Master of the House!"</p> + +<p>"<i>What</i>?" gasped Flame.</p> + +<p>"Earle Delcote," bowed the Stranger.</p> + +<p>With a little hand that trembled perfectly palpably Flame reached back +to the arm of the big carved chair for support.</p> + +<p>"Why—why, but Mr. Delcote is an old man," she gasped. "I'm almost +sure he's an old man."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p> + +<p>The smile on Delcote's mouth spread suddenly to his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Not yet,—Thank God!" he bowed.</p> + +<p>With a panic-stricken glance at doors, windows, cracks, the chimney +pipe itself, Flame sank limply down in her seat again and gestured +towards the empty place opposite her.</p> + +<p>"Have a—have a chair," she stammered. Great tears welled suddenly to +her eyes. "Oh, I—I know I oughtn't to be here," she struggled. "It's +perfectly ... awful! I haven't the slightest right! Not the slightest! +It's the—the cheekiest thing that any girl in the world ever did!... +But your Butler said...! And he did so want to go away and—And I did +so love your dogs! And I did so want to make <i>one</i> Christmas in the +world just—exactly the way I wanted it! And—and—Mother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> and Father +will be crazy!... And—and—"</p> + +<p>Without a single glance at anything except herself, the Master of the +House slipped back into his chair.</p> + +<p>"Have a heart!" he said.</p> + +<p>Flame did <i>not</i> accept this suggestion. With a very severe frown and +downcast eyes she sat staring at the table. It seemed a very cheerless +table suddenly, with all the dogs in various stages of disheveled +finery grouped blatantly around their Master's chair.</p> + +<p>"I can at least have my cat," she thought, "my—faithful cat!" In +another instant she had slipped from the table, extracted poor Puss +from a clutter of pans in the back of a cupboard, stripped the last +shred of masquerade from her outraged form, and brought her back +growl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>ing and bristling to perch on one arm of the high-backed chair. +"Th—ere!" said Flame.</p> + +<p>Glancing up from this innocent triumph, she encountered the eyes of +the Master of the House fixed speculatively on the big turkey.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid everything is very cold," she confided with distinctly +formal regret.</p> + +<p>"Not for anything," laughed Delcote quite suddenly, "would I have kept +you waiting—if I had only known."</p> + +<p>Two spots of color glowed hotly in the girl's cheeks.</p> + +<p>"It was not for you I was waiting," she said coldly.</p> + +<p>"N—o?" teased Delcote. "You astonish me. For whom, then? Some +incredible wight who, worse than late—isn't going to show up at +all?... Heaven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> sent, I consider myself.... How else could so little a +girl have managed so big a turkey?"</p> + +<p>"There ... isn't any ... carving knife," whispered Flame.</p> + +<p>The tears were glistening on her cheeks now instead of just in her +eyes. A less observing man than Delcote might have thought the tears +were really for the carving knife.</p> + +<p>"What? No carving knife?" he roared imperiously. "And the house +guaranteed 'furnished'?" Very furiously he began to hunt all around +the kitchen in the most impossible places.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's furnished all right," quivered Flame. "It's just chock-full +of dead things! Pressed flowers! And old plush bags! And pressed +flowers! And—and pressed flowers!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Great Heavens!" groaned Delcote. "And I came here to forget 'dead +things'!"</p> + +<p>"Your—your Butler said you'd had misfortunes," murmured Flame.</p> + +<p>"Misfortunes?" rallied Delcote. "I should think I had! In a single +year I've lost health,—money,—most everything I own in the world +except my man and my dogs!"</p> + +<p>"They're ... good dogs," testified Flame.</p> + +<p>"And the Doctor's sent me here for six months," persisted Delcote, +"before he'll even hear of my plunging into things again!"</p> + +<p>"Six months is a—a good long time," said Flame. "If you'd turn the +hems we could make yellow curtains for the parlor in no time at all!"</p> + +<p>"W—we?" stammered Delcote.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p> + +<p>"M—Mother," said Flame. "... It's a long time since any dogs lived in +the Rattle-Pane House."</p> + +<p>"Rattle-<i>Brain</i> house?" bridled Delcote.</p> + +<p>"Rattle-<i>Pane</i> House," corrected Flame.</p> + +<p>A little bit worriedly Delcote returned to his seat.</p> + +<p>"I shall have to rend the turkey, instead of carve it," he said.</p> + +<p>"Rend it," acquiesced Flame.</p> + +<p>In the midst of the rending a dark frown appeared between Delcote's +eyes.</p> + +<p>"These—these guests that you were expecting—?" he questioned.</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>stop</i>!" cried Flame. "Dreadful as I am I never—never would have +dreamed of inviting 'guests'!"</p> + +<p>"This 'guest' then," frowned Delcote. "Was he...?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you mean ... Bertrand?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> flushed Flame. "Oh, truly, I didn't +invite him! He just butted in ... same as you!"</p> + +<p>"Same as ... I?" stammered Delcote.</p> + +<p>"Well..." floundered Flame. "Well ... you know what I mean and ..."</p> + +<p>With peculiar intentness the Master of the House fixed his eyes on the +knotted white handkerchief which Flame had thrown across the corner of +her chair.</p> + +<p>"And is this 'Bertrand' person so ... so dazzling," he questioned, +"that human eye may not look safely upon his countenance?"</p> + +<p>"Bertrand ... dazzling?" protested Flame. "Oh, no! He's really quite +dull.... It was only," she explained with sudden friendliness, "It was +only that I had promised Mother not to 'see'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> him.... So, of course, +when he butted in I...."</p> + +<p>"O—h," relaxed the Master of the House. With a precipitous flippancy +of manners which did not conform at all to the somewhat tragic +austerity of his face he snatched up his knife and fork and thumped +joyously on the table with the handles of them. "And some people talk +about a country village being dull in the Winter Time!" he chuckled. +"With a Dog's Masquerade and a Robbery at the Rectory all happening +the same evening!" Grabbing her cat in her arms, Flame jerked her +chair back from the table.</p> + +<p>"A—a robbery at the Rectory?" she gasped. "Why—why, I'm the Rectory! +I must go home at once!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Shucks!" shrugged the Master of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> the House. "It's all over now. +But the people at the railroad station were certainly buzzing about it +as I came through."</p> + +<p>"B—buzzing about it?" articulated Flame with some difficulty.</p> + +<p>Expeditiously the Master of the House resumed his rending of the +turkey.</p> + +<p>"Are you really from the Rectory?" he questioned. "How amusing.... +Well, there's nothing really you could do about it now.... The +constable and his prisoner are already on their way to the County +Seat—wherever that may be. And a freshly 'burgled' house is rather a +creepy place for a young girl to return to all alone.... Your parents +are away, I believe?"</p> + +<p>"Con—stable ... constable," babbled Flame quite idiotically.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes, the regular constable was off Christmasing somewhere it seems, +so he put a substitute on his job, a stranger from somewhere. Some +substitute that! No mulling over hot toddies on Christmas night for +him! He <i>saw</i> the marauder crawling in through the Rectory window! He +<i>saw</i> him fumbling now to the left, now to the right, all through the +front hall! He followed him up the stairs to a closet where the silver +was evidently kept! He caught the man red-handed as it were! Or +rather—white-handed," flushed the Master of the House for some quite +unaccountable reason. "To be perfectly accurate," he explained +conscientiously, "he was caught with a pair of—of—" Delicately he +spelt out the word. "With a pair of—c-o-r-s-e-t-s rolled up in his +hand. But inside the roll it seemed there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> was a solid silver—very +elaborate carving set which the Parish had recently presented. The +wretch was just unrolling it,—them, when he was caught."</p> + +<p>"That was Bertrand!" said Flame. "My Father's Lay Reader."</p> + +<p>It was the man's turn now to jump to his feet.</p> + +<p>"<i>What</i>?" he cried.</p> + +<p>"I sent him for the carving knife," said Flame.</p> + +<p>"<i>What</i>?" repeated the man. Consternation versus Hilarity went racing +suddenly like a cat-and-dog combat across his eyes.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Flame.</p> + +<p>From the outside door the sound of furious knocking occurred suddenly.</p> + +<p>"That sounds to me like—like parents' knocking," shivered Flame.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p> + +<p>"It sounds to me like an escaped Lay Reader," said her Host.</p> + +<p>With a single impulse they both started for the door.</p> + +<p>"Don't worry, Little Girl," whispered the young Stranger in the dark +hall.</p> + +<p>"I'll try not to," quivered Flame.</p> + +<p>They were both right, it seemed.</p> + +<p>It was Parents <i>and</i> the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>All three breathless, all three excited, all three reproachful,—they +swept into the warm, balsam-scented Rattle-Pane House with a gust of +frost, a threat of disaster.</p> + +<p>"F—lame," sighed her Father.</p> + +<p>"Flame!" scolded her Mother.</p> + +<p>"Flame?" implored the Lay Reader.</p> + +<p>"What a pretty name," beamed the Master of the House. "Pray be seated, +everybody," he gestured graciously to left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> and right,—shoving one +dog expeditiously under the table with his foot, while he yanked +another out of a chair with his least gesticulating hand. "This is +certainly a very great pleasure, I assure you," he affirmed distinctly +to Miss Flamande Nourice. "Returning quite unexpectedly to my new +house this lonely Christmas evening," he explained very definitely to +the Rev. Flamande Nourice, "I can't express to you what it means to me +to find this pleasant gathering of neighbors waiting here to welcome +me! And when I think of the effort <i>you</i> must have made to get here, +Mr. Bertrand," he beamed. "A young man of all your obligations +and—complications—"</p> + +<p>"Pleasant ... gathering of neighbors?" questioned Mrs. Nourice with +some emotion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh, I forgot," deprecated the Master of the House with real concern. +"Your Christmas season is not, of course, as inherently 'pleasant' as +one might wish.... I was told at the railroad station how you and Mr. +Nourice had been called away by the illness of a relative."</p> + +<p>"We were called away," confided Mrs. Nourice with increasing asperity, +"called away at considerable inconvenience—by a very sick +relative—to receive the present of a Piebald pony."</p> + +<p>"Oh, goody!" quickened Flame and collapsed again under the weight of +her Mother's glance.</p> + +<p>"And then came this terrible telephone message," shuddered her Mother. +"The implied dishonor of one of your Father's most trusted—most +trusted associates!"</p> + +<p>"I was right in the midst of such an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> interesting book," deplored her +Father. "And Uncle Wally wouldn't lend it."</p> + +<p>"So we borrowed Uncle Wally's new automobile and started right for +home!" explained her Mother. "It was at the Junction that we made +connections with the Constable and his prisoner."</p> + +<p>"His—victim," intercepted the Lay Reader coldly.</p> + +<p>At this interception everybody turned suddenly and looked at the Lay +Reader. His mouth was twisted very slightly to one side. It gave him a +rather unpleasant snarling expression. If this expression had been +vocal instead of muscular it would have shocked his hearers.</p> + +<p>"Your Father had to go on board the train and identify him," persisted +Flame's Mother. "It was very distressing.... The Constable was most +unwilling to re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>lease him. Your Father had to use every kind of an +argument."</p> + +<p>"Every ... kind," mused her Father. "He doesn't even deny being in the +house," continued her Mother, "being in my closet, ... being caught +with a—a—"</p> + +<p>"With a silver carving knife and fork in his hand," intercepted the +Lay Reader hastily.</p> + +<p>"Yet all the time he persists," frowned Flame's Mother, "that there is +some one in the world who can give a perfectly good explanation if +only,—he won't even say 'he or she' but 'it', if only 'it' would."</p> + +<p>Something in the stricken expression of her daughter's face brought a +sudden flicker of suspicion to the Mother's eyes.</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> don't know anything about this, do you, Flame?" she demanded. +"Is it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> remotely possible that after your promise to me,—your sacred +promise to me—?" The whole structure of the home,—of mutual +confidence,—of all the Future itself, crackled and toppled in her +voice.</p> + +<p>To the Lay Reader's face, and right <i>through</i> the Lay Reader's face, +to the face of the Master of the House, Flame's glance went homing +with an unaccountable impulse.</p> + +<p>With one elbow leaning casually on the mantle-piece, his narrowed eyes +faintly inscrutable, faintly smiling, it seemed suddenly to the young +Master of the House that he had been waiting all his discouraged years +for just that glance. His heart gave the queerest jump.</p> + +<p>Flame's face turned suddenly very pink.</p> + +<p>Like a person in a dream, she turned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> back to her Mother. There was a +smile on her face, but even the smile was the smile of a dreaming +person.</p> + +<p>"No—Mother," she said, "I haven't seen Bertrand ... to-day."</p> + +<p>"Why, you're looking right at him now!" protested her exasperated +Mother.</p> + +<p>With a gentle murmur of dissent, Flame's Father stepped forward and +laid his arm across the young girl's shoulder. "She—she may be +looking at him," he said. "But I'm almost perfectly sure that she +doesn't ... see him."</p> + +<p>"Why, whatever in the world do you mean?" demanded his wife. "Whatever +in the world does anybody mean? If there was only another woman here! +A mature ... sane woman! A——" With a flare of accusation she turned +from Flame to the Master of the House. "This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> Miss Flora that my +daughter spoke of,—where is she? I insist on seeing her! Please +summon her instantly!"</p> + +<p>Crossing genially to the table the Master of the House reached down +and dragged out the Bull Dog by the brindled scuff of her neck. The +scratch on her nose was still bleeding slightly. And one eye was +closed.</p> + +<p>"This is—Miss Flora!" he said.</p> + +<p>Indignantly Flame's Mother glanced at the dog, and then from her +daughter's face to the face of the young man again.</p> + +<p>"And you call <i>that</i>—a lady?" she demanded.</p> + +<p>"N—not technically," admitted the young man.</p> + +<p>For an instant a perfectly tense silence reigned. Then from under a +shadowy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> basket the Cat crept out, shining, sinuous, with extended +paw, and began to pat a sprig of holly cautiously along the floor.</p> + +<p>Yielding to the reaction Flame bent down suddenly and hugging the Wolf +Hound's head to her breast buried her face in the soft, sweet +shagginess.</p> + +<p>"Not sanitary, Mother?" she protested. "Why, they're as sanitary +as—as violets!"</p> + +<p>As though dreaming he were late to church and had forgotten his +vestments, Flame's Father reached out nervously and draped a great +string of ground-pine stole-like about his neck.</p> + +<p>"We all," broke in the Master of the House quite irrelevantly, "seem +to have experienced a slight twinge of irritability—the past few +minutes. Hunger, I've no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> doubt!... So suppose we all sit down +together to this sumptuous—if somewhat chilled repast? After the soup +certainly, even after very cold soup, all explanations I'm sure will +be—cheerfully and satisfactorily exchanged. Miss—Flame I know has a +most amusing story to tell and—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes!" rallied Flame. "And it's almost all about being blindfolded +and sending poor Mr. Lorello—"</p> + +<p>"So if by any chance, Mr.—Mr. Bertrand," interrupted the Master of +the House a bit abruptly, "you happen to have the carving knife and +fork still on your person ... I thought I saw a white string +hanging—"</p> + +<p>"I have!" said the Lay Reader with his first real grin.</p> + +<p>With great formality the Master of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> House drew back a chair and +bowed Flame's Mother to it.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly the Red Setter lifted his sensitive nose in the air, and +the spotted Dalmatian bristled faintly across the ridge of his back. +Through the whole room, it seemed, swept a curious cottony sense of +Something-About-to-Happen! Was it that a sound hushed? Or that a hush +decided suddenly to be a sound?</p> + +<p>With a little sharp catch of her breath Flame dashed to the window, +and swung the sash upward! Where once had breathed the drab, dusty +smell of frozen grass and mud quickened suddenly a curious metallic +dampness like the smell of new pennies.</p> + +<p>"Mr. ... Delcote!" she called.</p> + +<p>In an instant his slender form sil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>houetted darkly with hers in the +open window against the eternal mystery and majesty of a Christmas +night.</p> + +<p>"And <i>then</i> the snow came!"</p> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">End</span></h3> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs, by +Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD-WILL TO DOGS *** + +***** This file should be named 20213-h.htm or 20213-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/2/1/20213/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs + +Author: Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + +Release Date: December 29, 2006 [EBook #20213] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD-WILL TO DOGS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + Peace on Earth, + + Good-Will to Dogs + + + + By + + Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + + Author of "Old Dad" + + + + + New York + + E. P. Dutton & Company + + 681 Fifth Avenue + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1920, + + BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY + + + _First printing October, 1920_ + + _Second printing October, 1920_ + + _Third printing October, 1920_ + + * * * * * + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Part I + +Part II + + * * * * * + + + + +PEACE ON EARTH GOOD WILL TO DOGS + +PART I + + +If you don't like Christmas stories, don't read this one! + +And if you don't like dogs I don't know just what to advise you to do! + +For I warn you perfectly frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and +distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story +whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest +in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, +crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular brand of brain and ink +can conjure up on a single keyboard! And very large-sized dogs shall +romp through every page! And the mercury shiver perpetually in the +vicinity of zero! And every foot of earth be crusty-brown and bare +with no white snow at all till the very last moment when you'd just +about given up hope! And all the heart of the story is very,--oh +_very_ young! + +For purposes of propriety and general historical authenticity there +are of course parents in the story. And one or two other oldish +persons. But they all go away just as early in the narrative as I can +manage it.--Are obliged to go away! + +Yet lest you find in this general combination of circumstances some +sinister threat of audacity, let me conventionalize the story at once +by opening it at that most conventional of all conventional +Christmas-story hours,--the Twilight of Christmas Eve. + +Nuff said?--Christmas Eve, you remember? Twilight? Awfully cold +weather? And somebody very young? + +Now for the story itself! + +After five blustering, wintry weeks of village speculation and gossip +there was of course considerable satisfaction in being the first to +solve the mysterious holiday tenancy of the Rattle-Pane House. + +Breathless with excitement Flame Nourice telephoned the news from the +village post-office. From a pedestal of boxes fairly bulging with +red-wheeled go-carts, one keen young elbow rammed for balance into a +gay glassy shelf of stick-candy, green tissue garlands tickling +across her cheek, she sped the message to her mother. + +"O Mother-Funny!" triumphed Flame. "I've found out who's Christmasing +at the Rattle-Pane House!--It's a red-haired setter dog with one black +ear! And he's sitting at the front gate this moment! Superintending +the unpacking of the furniture van! And I've named him Lopsy!" + +"Why, Flame; how--absurd!" gasped her mother. In consideration of the +fact that Flame's mother had run all the way from the icy-footed +chicken yard to answer the telephone it shows distinctly what stuff +she was made of that she gasped nothing else. + +And that Flame herself re-telephoned within the half hour to +acknowledge her absurdity shows equally distinctly what stuff _she_ +was made of! It was from the summit of a crate of holly-wreaths that +she telephoned this time. + +"Oh Mother-Funny," apologized Flame, "you were perfectly right. No lone +dog in the world could possibly manage a great spooky place like the +Rattle-Pane House. There are two other dogs with him! A great long, narrow +sofa-shaped dog upholstered in lemon and white,--something terribly +ferocious like 'Russian Wolf Hound' I think he is! But I've named him +Beautiful-Lovely! And there's the neatest looking paper-white coach dog +just perfectly ruined with ink-spots! Blunder-Blot, I think, will make a +good name for him! And--" + +"Oh--Fl--ame!" panted her Mother. "Dogs--do--not--take houses!" It +was not from the chicken-yard that she had come running this time but +only from her Husband's Sermon-Writing-Room in the attic. + +"Oh don't they though?" gloated Flame. "Well, they've taken this one, +anyway! Taken it by storm, I mean! Scratched all the green paint off +the front door! Torn a hole big as a cavern in the Barberry Hedge! +Pushed the sun-dial through a bulkhead!--If it snows to-night the +cellar'll be a Glacier! And--" + +"Dogs--do--not--take--houses," persisted Flame's mother. She was still +persisting it indeed when she returned to her husband's study. + +Her husband, it seemed, had not noticed her absence. Still poring over +the tomes and commentaries incidental to the preparation of his next +Sunday's sermon his fine face glowed half frown, half ecstasy, in the +December twilight, while close at his elbow all unnoticed a smoking +kerosine lamp went smudging its acrid path to the ceiling. Dusky lock +for dusky lock, dreamy eye for dreamy eye, smoking lamp for smoking +lamp, it might have been a short-haired replica of Flame herself. + +"Oh if Flame had only been 'set' like the maternal side of the house!" +reasoned Flame's Mother. "Or merely dreamy like her Father! Her Father +being only dreamy could sometimes be diverted from his dreams! But to +be 'set' and 'dreamy' both? Absolutely 'set' on being absolutely +'dreamy'? That was Flame!" With renewed tenacity Flame's Mother +reverted to Truth as Truth. "Dogs do _not_ take houses!" she affirmed +with unmistakable emphasis. + +"Eh? What?" jumped her husband. "Dogs? Dogs? Who said anything about +dogs?" With a fretted pucker between his brows he bent to his work +again. "You interrupted me," he reproached her. "My sermon is about +Hell-Fire.--I had all but smelled it.--It was very disagreeable." With +a gesture of impatience he snatched up his notes and tore them in two. +"I think I will write about the Garden of Eden instead!" he rallied. +"The Garden of Eden in Iris time! Florentina Alba everywhere! +Whiteness! Sweetness!--Now let me see,--orris root I believe is +deducted from the Florentina Alba--." + +"U--m--m--m," sniffed Flame's Mother. With an impulse purely practical +she started for the kitchen. "The season happens to be Christmas +time," she suggested bluntly. "Now if you could see your way to make a +sermon that smelt like doughnuts and plum-pudding--" + +"Doughnuts?" queried her Husband and hurried after her. Supplementing +the far, remote Glory-of-God expression in his face, the +glory-of-doughnuts shone suddenly very warmly. + +Flame at least did not have to be reminded about the Seasons. + +"Oh _mother_!" telephoned Flame almost at once, "It's--so much nearer +Christmas than it was half an hour ago! Are you sure everything will +keep? All those big packages that came yesterday? That humpy one +especially? Don't you think you ought to peep? Or poke? Just the +teeniest, tiniest little peep or poke? It would be a shame if +anything spoiled! A--turkey--or a--or a fur coat--or anything." + +"I am--making doughnuts," confided her Mother with the faintest +possible taint of asperity. + +"O--h," conceded Flame. "And Father's watching them? Then I'll hurry! +M--Mother?" deprecated the excited young voice. "You are always so +horridly right! Lopsy and Beautiful-Lovely and Blunder-Blot are _not_ +Christmasing all alone in the Rattle-Pane House! There is a man with +them! Don't tell Father,--he's so nervous about men!" + +"A--man?" stammered her Mother. "Oh I hope not a young man! Where did +he come from?" + +"Oh I don't think he came at all," confided Flame. It was Flame who +was perplexed this time. "He looks to me more like a person who had +always been there! Like something I mean that the dogs found in the +attic! Quite crumpled he is! And with a red waistcoat!--A--A butler +perhaps?--A--A sort of a second hand butler? Oh Mother!--I wish we had +a butler!" + +"Flame--?" interrupted her Mother quite abruptly. "Where are you doing +all this telephoning from? I only gave you eighteen cents and it was +to buy cereal with." + +"Cereal?" considered Flame. "Oh that's all right," she glowed +suddenly. "I've paid cash for the telephoning and charged the cereal." + +With a swallow faintly guttural Flame's Mother hung up the receiver. +"Dogs--do--not--have--butlers," she persisted unshakenly. + +She was perfectly right. They did not, it seemed. + +No one was quicker than Flame to acknowledge a mistake. Before five +o'clock Flame had added a telephone item to the cereal bill. + +"Oh--Mother," questioned Flame. "The little red sweater and Tam that I +have on?--Would they be all right, do you think, for me to make a call in? +Not a formal call, of course,--just a--a neighborly greeting at the door? +It being Christmas Eve and everything!--And as long as I have to pass +right by the house anyway?--There is a lady at the Rattle-Pane House! +A--A--what Father would call a Lady Maiden!--Miss--" + +"Oh not a real lady, I think," protested her Mother. "Not with all +those dogs. No real lady I think would have so many dogs.--It--It +isn't sanitary." + +"Isn't--sanitary?" cried Flame. "Why Mother, they are the most +absolutely--perfectly sanitary dogs you ever saw in your life!" Into +her eager young voice an expression of ineffable dignity shot +suddenly. "Well--really, Mother," she said, "In whatever concerns men +or crocheting--I'm perfectly willing to take Father's advice or yours. +But after all, I'm eighteen," stiffened the young voice. "And when it +comes to dogs--I must use my own judgment!" + +"And just what is the lady's name?" questioned her Mother a bit +weakly. + +"Her name is 'Miss Flora'!" brightened Flame. "The Butler has just +gone to the Station to meet her! I heard him telephoning quite +frenziedly! I think she must have missed her train or something! It +seemed to make everybody very nervous! Maybe _she's_ nervous! Maybe +she's a nervous invalid! With a lost Lover somewhere! And all sorts of +pressed flowers!--Somebody ought to call anyway! Call right away, I +mean, before she gets any more nervous!--So many people's first +impressions of a place--I've heard--are spoiled for lack of some +perfectly silly little thing like a nutmeg grater or a hot water +bottle! And oh, Mother, it's been so long since any one lived in the +Rattle-Pane House! Not for years and years and years! Not dogs, +anyway! Not a lemon and white wolf hound! Not setters! Not spotty +dogs!--Oh Mother, just one little wee single minute at the door? Just +long enough to say 'The Rev. and Mrs. Flamande Nourice, and Miss +Nourice, present their compliments!'--And are you by any chance short +a marrow-bone? Or would you possibly care to borrow an extra quilt to +rug-up under the kitchen table?... Blunder-Blot doesn't look very +thick. Or--Oh Mother, _p-l-e-a-s-e!_" + +When Flame said "Please" like that the word was no more, no less, than +the fabled bundle of rags or haunch of venison hurled back from a +wolf-pursued sleigh to divert the pursuer even temporarily from the +main issue. While Flame's Mother paused to consider the particularly +flavorous sweetness of that entreaty,--to picture the flashing eye, +the pulsing throat, the absurdly crinkled nostril that invariably +accompanied all Flame's entreaties, Flame herself was escaping! + +Taken all in all, escaping was one of the best things that Flame +did.... As well as the most becoming! Whipped into scarlet by the +sudden plunge from a stove-heated store into the frosty night her +young cheeks fairly blazed their bright reaction. Frost and speed +quickened her breath. Glint for glint her shining eyes challenged the +moon. Fearful even yet that some tardy admonition might overtake her +she sped like a deer through the darkness. + +It was a dull-smelling night. Pretty, but very dull-smelling. +Disdainfully her nostrils crinkled their disappointment. + +"Christmas Time adventures ought to smell like Christmas!" she +scolded. "Maybe if I'm ever President," she argued, "I won't do so +awfully well with the Tariff or things like that! But Christmas shall +smell of Christmas! Not just of frozen mud! And camphor balls!... I'll +have great vats of Fir Balsam essence at every street corner! And +gigantic atomizers! And every passerby shall be sprayed! And stores! +And churches! And--And everybody who doesn't like Christmas shall be +_dipped_!" + +Under her feet the smoothish village road turned suddenly into the +harsh and hobbly ruts of a country lane. With fluctuant blackness +against immutable blackness great sweeping pine trees swished weirdly +into the horizon. Where the hobbly lane curved darkly into a meadow +through a snarl of winter-stricken willows the rattle of a loose +window-pane smote quite distinctly on the ear. It was a horrid, +deserted sound. And with the instinctive habit of years Flame's little +hand clutched at her heart. Then quite abruptly she laughed aloud. + +"Oh you can't scare me any more, you gloomy old Rattle-Pane House!" +she laughed. "You're not deserted now! People are Christmasing in you! +Whether you like it or not you're being Christmased!" + +Very tentatively she puckered her lips to a whistle. Almost instantly +from the darkness ahead a dog's bark rang out, deep, sonorous, faintly +suspicious. With a little chuckle of joy she crawled through the +Barberry hedge and emerged for a single instant only at her full +height before three furry shapes came hurtling out of the darkness +and toppled her over backwards. + +"Stop, Beautiful-Lovely!" she gasped. "Stop, Lopsy! Behave yourself, +Blunder-Blot! _Sillies_! Don't you know I'm the lady that was talking +to you this morning through the picket fence? Don't you know I'm the +lady that fed you the box of cereal?--Oh dear--Oh dear--Oh dear," she +struggled. "I knew, of course, that there were three dogs--but who +ever in the world would have guessed that three could be so many?" + +As expeditiously as possible she picked herself up and bolted for the +house with two furry shapes leaping largely on either side of her and +one cold nose sniffing interrogatively at her heels. Her heart was +very light,--her pulses jumping with excitement,--an occasional furry +head doming into the palm of her hand warmed the whole bleak night +with its sense of mute companionship. But the back of her heels felt +certainly very queer. Even the warm yellow lights of the Rattle-Pane +House did not altogether dispel her uneasiness. + +"Maybe I'd better not plan to make my call so--so very informal," she +decided suddenly. "Not at a house where there are quite so many dogs! +Not at a house where there is a butler ... anyway!" + +Crowding and pushing and yelping and fawning around her, it was the +dogs who announced her ultimate arrival. Like a drift of snow the huge +wolf-hound whirled his white shagginess into the vestibule. Shrill as +a banging blind the impetuous coach-dog lurched his sleek weight +against the door. Sucking at a crack of light the red setter's kindled +nose glowed and snorted with dragonlike ferocity. Without knock or +ring the door-handle creaked and turned, three ecstatic shapes went +hurtling through a yellow glare into the hall beyond, and Flame found +herself staring up into the blinking, astonished eyes of the crumpled +old man with the red waistcoat. + +"G--Good evening,--Butler!" she rallied. + +"Good evening, Miss!" stammered the Butler. + +"I've--I've come to call," confided Flame. + +"To--call?" stammered the Butler. + +"Yes," conceded Flame. "I--I don't happen to have an engraved card +with me." Before the continued imperturbability of the old Butler all +subterfuge seemed suddenly quite useless. "I _never_ have had an +engraved card," she confided quite abruptly. "But you might tell Miss +Flora if you please--" ... Would nothing crack the Butler's +imperturbability?... Well maybe she could prove just a little bit +imperturbable herself! "Oh! Butlers don't 'tell' people things, do +they?... They always 'announce' things, don't they?... Well, kindly +announce to Miss Flora that the--the Minister's Daughter is--at the +door!... Oh, _no_! It isn't asking for a subscription or anything!" +she hastened quite suddenly to explain. "It's just a Christian +call!... B--Being so nervous and lost on the train and everything ... +we thought Miss Flora might be glad to know that there were +neighbors.... We live so near and everything.... And can run like the +wind! Oh, not Mother, of course!... She's a bit stout! And Father +starts all right but usually gets thinking of something else! But +I...? Kindly announce to Miss Flora," she repeated with palpable +crispness, "that the Minister's Daughter is at the door!" + +Fixedly old, fixedly crumpled, fixedly imperturbable, the Butler +stepped back a single jerky pace and bowed her towards the parlor. + +"Now," thrilled Flame, "the adventure really begins." + +It certainly was a sad and romantic looking parlor, and strangely +furnished, Flame thought, for even "moving times." Through a maze of +bulging packing boxes and barrels she picked her way to a faded +rose-colored chair that flanked the fire-place. That the chair was +already half occupied by a pile of ancient books and four dusty garden +trowels only served to intensify the general air of gloom. Presiding +over all, two dreadful bouquets of long-dead grasses flared wanly on +the mantle-piece. And from the tattered old landscape paper on the +walls Civil War heroes stared regretfully down through pale and +tarnished frames. + +"Dear me ... dear me," shivered Flame. "They're not going to Christmas +at all ... evidently! Not a sprig of holly anywhere! Not a ravel of +tinsel! Not a jingle bell!... Oh she must have lost a lot of lovers," +thrilled Flame. "I can bring her flowers, anyway! My very first Paper +White Narcissus! My--." + +With a scrape of the foot the Butler made known his return. + +"Miss Flora!" he announced. + +With a catch of her breath Flame jumped to her feet and turned to +greet the biggest, ugliest, most brindled, most wizened Bull Dog she +had ever seen in her life. + +"_Miss Flora!_" repeated the old Butler succinctly. + +"Miss Flora?" gasped Flame. "Why.... Why, I thought Miss Flora was a +Lady! Why--" + +"Miss Flora is indeed a very grand lady, Miss!" affirmed the Butler +without a flicker of expression. "Of a pedigree so famous ... so +distinguished ... so ..." Numerically on his fingers he began to count +the distinctions. "Five prizes this year! And three last! Do you mind +the chop?" he gloated. "The breadth! The depth!... Did you never hear +of alauntes?" he demanded. "Them bull-baiting dogs that was invented +by the second Duke of York or thereabouts in the year 1406?" + +"Oh my Glory!" thrilled Flame. "Is Miss Flora as old as _that_?" + +"Miss Flora," said the old Butler with some dignity, "is young--hardly +two in fact--so young that she seems to me but just weaned." + +With her great eyes goggled to a particularly disconcerting sort of +scrutiny Miss Flora sprang suddenly forward to investigate the +visitor. + +As though by a preconcerted signal a chair crashed over in the hall +and the wolf hound and the setter and the coach dog came hurtling back +in a furiously cordial onslaught. With wags and growls and yelps of +joy all four dogs met in Flame's lap. + +"They seem to like me, don't they?" triumphed Flame. Intermittently +through the melee of flapping ears,--shoving shoulders,--waving paws, +her beaming little face proved the absolute sincerity of that triumph. +"Mother's never let me have any dogs," she confided. "Mother thinks +they're not--Oh, of course, I realize that four dogs is a--a good +many," she hastened diplomatically to concede to a certain sudden +droop around the old Butler's mouth corners. + +From his slow, stooping poke of the sulky fire the old Butler glanced +up with a certain plaintive intentness. + +"All dogs is too many," he affirmed. + +"Come Christmas time I wishes I was dead." + +"Wish you were dead ... at Christmas Time?" cried Flame. Acute shock +was in her protest. + +"It's the feedin'," sighed the old Butler. "It ain't that I mind +eatin' with them on All Saints' Day or Fourth of July or even Sundays. +But come Christmas Time it seems like I craves to eat with More +Humans.... I got a nephew less'n twenty miles away. He's got cider in +his cellar. And plum puddings. His woman she raises guinea chickens. +And mince pies there is. And tasty gravies.--But me I mixes dog bread +and milk--dog bread and milk--till I can't see nothing--think nothing +but mush. And him with cider in his cellar!... It ain't as though Mr. +Delcote ever came himself to prove anything," he argued. "Not he! Not +Christmas Time! It's travelling he is.... He's had ... misfortunes," +he confided darkly. "He travels for 'em same as some folks travels for +their healths. Most especially at Christmas Time he travels for his +misfortunes! He ..." + +"_Mr. Delcote_?" quickened Flame. "Mr. Delcote?" (Now at last was the +mysterious tenancy about to be divulged?) + +"All he says," persisted the old Butler. "All he says is 'Now +Barret,'--that's me, 'Now Barret I trust your honor to see that the +dogs ain't neglected just because it's Christmas. There ain't no +reason, Barret', he says, 'why innocent dogs should suffer Christmas +just because everybody else does. They ain't done nothing.... It won't +do now Barret', he says, 'for you to give 'em their dinner at dawn +when they ain't accustomed to it, and a pail of water, and shut 'em up +while you go off for the day with any barrel of cider. You know what +dogs is, Barret', he says. 'And what they isn't. They've got to be fed +regular', he says, 'and with discipline. Else there's deaths.--Some +natural. Some unnatural. And some just plain spectacular from +furniture falling on their arguments. So if there's any fatalities +come this Christmas Time, Barret', he says, 'or any undue gains in +weight or losses in weight, I shall infer, Barret', he says, 'that you +was absent without leave.' ... It don't look like a very wholesome +Christmas for me," sighed the old Butler. "Not either way. Not what +you'd call wholesome." + +"But this Mr. Delcote?" puzzled Flame. "What a perfectly horrid man +he must be to give such heavenly dogs nothing but dog-bread and milk +for their Christmas dinner!... Is he young? Is he old? Is he thin? Is +he fat? However in the world did he happen to come to a queer, +battered old place like the Rattle-Pane House? But once come why +didn't he stay? And--And--And--?" + +"Yes'm," sighed the old Butler. + +In a ferment of curiosity, Flame edged jerkily forward, and subsided +as jerkily again. + +"Oh, if this only was a Parish Call," she deprecated, "I could ask +questions right out loud. 'How? Where? Why? When?' ... But being just +a social call--I suppose--I suppose...?" Appealingly her eager eyes +searched the old Butler's inscrutable face. + +"Yes'm," repeated the old Butler dully. Through the quavering fingers +that he swept suddenly across his brow two very genuine tears +glistened. + +With characteristic precipitousness Flame jumped to her feet. + +"Oh, darn Mr. Delcote!" she cried. "I'll feed your dogs, Christmas +Day! It won't take a minute after my own dinner or before! I'll run +like the wind! No one need ever know!" + +So it was that when Flame arrived at her own home fifteen minutes +later, and found her parents madly engaged in packing suit-cases, +searching time-tables, and rushing generally to and fro from attic to +cellar, no very mutual exchange of confidences ensued. + +"It's your Uncle Wally!" panted her Mother. + +"Another shock!" confided her Father. + +"Not such a bad one, either," explained her Mother. "But of course +we'll have to go! The very first thing in the morning! Christmas Day, +too! And leave you all alone! It's a perfect shame! But I've planned +it all out for everybody! Father's Lay Reader, of course, will take +the Christmas service! We'll just have to omit the Christmas Tree +surprise for the children!... It's lucky we didn't even unpack the +trimmings! Or tell a soul about it." In a hectic effort to pack both a +thick coat and a thin coat and a thick dress and a thin dress and +thick boots and thin boots in the same suit-case she began very +palpably to pant again. "Yes! Every detail is all planned out!" she +asserted with a breathy sort of pride. "You and your Father are both +so flighty I don't know whatever in the world you'd do if I didn't +plan out everything for you!" + +With more manners than efficiency Flame and her Father dropped at once +every helpful thing they were doing and sat down in rocking chairs to +listen to the plan. + +"Flame, of course, can't stay here all alone. Flame's Mother turned +and confided _sotto voce_ to her husband. Young men might call. The +Lay Reader is almost sure to call.... He's a dear delightful soul of +course, but I'm afraid he has an amorous eye." + +"All Lay Readers have amorous eyes," reflected her husband. "Taken all +in all it is a great asset." + +"Don't be flippant!" admonished Flame's Mother. "There are reasons ... +why I prefer that Flame's first offer of marriage should not be from +a Lay Reader." + +"Why?" brightened Flame. + +"S--sh--," cautioned her Father. + +"Very good reasons," repeated her Mother. From the conglomerate +packing under her hand a puff of spilled tooth-powder whiffed +fragrantly into the air. + +"Yes?" prodded her husband's blandly impatient voice. + +"Flame shall go to her Aunt Minna's" announced the dominant maternal +voice. "By driving with us to the station, she'll have only two hours +to wait for her train, and that will save one bus fare! Aunt Minna is +a vegetarian and doesn't believe in sweets either, so that will be +quite a unique and profitable experience for Flame to add to her +general culinary education! It's a wonderful house!... A bit dark of +course! But if the day should prove at all bright,--not so bright of +course that Aunt Minna wouldn't be willing to have the shades up, +but--Oh and Flame," she admonished still breathlessly, "I think you'd +better be careful to wear one of your rather longish skirts! And oh do +be sure to wipe your feet every time you come in! And don't chatter! +Whatever you do, don't chatter! Your Aunt Minna, you know, is just a +little bit peculiar! But such a worthy woman! So methodical! So...." + +To Flame's inner vision appeared quite suddenly the pale, inscrutable +face of the old Butler who asked nothing,--answered nothing,--welcomed +nothing,--evaded nothing. + +"... Yes'm," said Flame. + +But it was a very frankly disconsolate little girl who stole late that +night to her Father's study, and perched herself high on the arm of +his chair with her cheek snuggled close to his. + +"Of Father-Funny," whispered Flame, "I've got such a queer little +pain." + +"A pain?" jerked her Father. "Oh dear me! Where is it? Go and find +your Mother at once!" + +"Mother?" frowned Flame. "Oh it isn't that kind of a pain.--It's in my +Christmas. I've got such a sad little pain in my Christmas." + +"Oh dear me--dear me!" sighed her Father. Like two people most +precipitously smitten with shyness they sat for a moment staring +blankly around the room at every conceivable object except each +other. Then quite suddenly they looked back at each other and smiled. + +"Father," said Flame. "You're not of course a very old man.... But +still you are pretty old, aren't you? You've seen a whole lot of +Christmasses, I mean?" + +"Yes," conceded her Father. + +From the great clumsy rolling collar of her blanket wrapper Flame's +little face loomed suddenly very pink and earnest. + +"But Father," urged Flame. "Did you ever in your whole life spend a +Christmas just exactly the way you wanted to? Honest-to-Santa Claus +now,--did you _ever_?" + +"Why--Why, no," admitted her Father after a second's hesitation. "Why +no, I don't believe I ever did." Quite frankly between his brows there +puckered a very black frown. "Now take to-morrow, for instance," he +complained. "I had planned to go fishing through the ice.... After the +morning service, of course,--after we'd had our Christmas dinner,--and +gotten tired of our presents,--every intention in the world I had of +going fishing through the ice.... And now your Uncle Wally has to go +and have a shock! I don't believe it was necessary. He should have +taken extra precautions. The least that delicate relatives can do is +to take extra precautions at holiday time.... Oh, of course your Uncle +Wally has books in his library," he brightened, "very interesting old +books that wouldn't be perfectly seemly for a minister of the Gospel +to have in his own library.... But still it's very disappointing," he +wilted again. + +"I agree with you ... utterly, Father-Funny!" said Flame. "But ... +Father," she persisted, "Of all the people you know in the +world,--millions would it be?" + +"No, call it thousands" corrected her Father. + +"Well, thousands," accepted Flame. "Old people, young people, fat +people, skinnys, cross people, jolly people?... Did you ever in your +life know _any one_ who had ever spent Christmas just the way he +wanted to?" + +"Why ... no, I don't know that I ever did," considered her Father. +With his elbows on the arms of his chair, his slender fingers forked +to a lovely Gothic arch above the bridge of his nose, he yielded +himself instantly to the reflection. "Why ... no, ... I don't know +that I ever did," he repeated with an increasing air of +conviction.... "When you're young enough to enjoy the day as a +'holler' day there's usually some blighting person who prefers to have +it observed as a holy day.... And by the time you reach an age where +you really rather appreciate its being a holy day the chances are that +you've got a houseful of racketty youngsters who fairly insist on +reverting to the 'holler' day idea again." + +"U--m--m," encouraged Flame. + +--"When you're little, of course," mused her Father, "you have to +spend the day the way your elders want you to!... You crave a +Christmas Tree but they prefer stockings! You yearn to skate but they +consider the weather better for corn-popping! You ask for a bicycle +but they had already found a very nice bargain in flannels! You beg to +dine the gay-kerchiefed Scissor-Grinder's child, but they invite the +Minister's toothless mother-in-law!... And when you're old enough to +go courting," he sighed, "your lady-love's sentiments are outraged if +you don't spend the day with her and your own family are perfectly +furious if you don't spend the day with them!... And after you're +married?" With a gesture of ultimate despair he sank back into his +cushions. "N--o, no one, I suppose, in the whole world, has ever spent +Christmas just exactly the way he wanted to!" + +"Well, I," triumphed Flame, "have got a chance to spend Christmas just +exactly the way I want to!... The one chance perhaps in a life-time, +it would seem!... No heart aches involved, no hurt feelings, no +disappointments for anybody! Nobody left out! Nobody dragged in! Why +Father-Funny," she cried. "It's an experience that might distinguish +me all my life long! Even when I'm very old and crumpled people would +point me out on the street and say '_There's_ some one who once spent +Christmas just exactly the way she wanted to'!" To a limpness almost +unbelievable the eager little figure wilted down within its +blanket-wrapper swathings. "And now ..." deprecated Flame, "Mother has +gone and wished me on Aunt Minna instead!" With a sudden revival of +enthusiasm two small hands crept out of their big cuffs and clutched +her Father by the ears. "Oh Father-Funny!" pleaded Flame. "If you were +too old to want it for a 'holler' day and not quite old enough to +need it for a holy day ... so that all you asked in the world was just +to have it a _holly_ day! Something all bright! Red and green! And +tinsel! and jingle-bells!... How would you like to have Aunt Minna +wished on you?... It isn't you know as though Aunt Minna was a--a +pleasant person," she argued with perfectly indisputable logic. "You +couldn't wish one 'A Merry Aunt Minna' any more than you could wish +'em a 'Merry Good Friday'!" From the clutch on his ears the small +hands crept to a point at the back of his neck where they encompassed +him suddenly in a crunching hug. "Oh Father-Funny!" implored Flame, +"You were a Lay Reader once! You must have had _very_ amorous eyes! +Couldn't you _please_ persuade Mother that..." + +With a crisp flutter of skirts Flame's Mother, herself, appeared +abruptly in the door. Her manner was very excited. + +"Why wherever in the world have you people been?" she cried. "Are you +stone deaf? Didn't you hear the telephone? Couldn't you even hear me +calling? Your Uncle Wally is worse! That is he's better but he thinks +he's worse! And they want us to come at once! It's something about a +new will! The Lawyer telephoned! He advises us to come at once! +They've sent an automobile for us! It will be here any minute!... But +whatever in the world shall we do about Flame?" she cried +distractedly. "You know how Uncle Wally feels about having young +people in the house! And she can't possibly go to Aunt Minna's till +to-morrow! And...." + +"But you see I'm not going to Aunt Minna's!" announced Flame quite +serenely. Slipping down from her Father's lap she stood with a round, +roly-poly flannel sort of dignity confronting both her parents. +"Father says I don't have to!" + +"Why, Flame!" protested her Father. + +"No, of course, you didn't say it with your mouth," admitted Flame. +"But you said it with your skin and bones!--I could feel it working." + +"Not go to your Aunt Minna's?" gasped her Mother. "What do you want to +do?... Stay at home and spend Christmas with the Lay Reader?" + +"When you and Father talk like that," murmured Flame with some +hauteur, "I don't know whether you're trying to run him down ... or +run him up." + +"Well, how do you feel about him yourself?" veered her Father quite +irrelevantly. + +"Oh, I like him--some," conceded Flame. In her bright cheeks suddenly +an even brighter color glowed. "I like him when he leaves out the +Litany," she said. "I've told him I like him when he leaves out the +Litany.--He's leaving it out more and more I notice.--Yes, I like him +very much." + +"But this Aunt Minna business," veered back her Father suddenly. "What +_do_ you want to do? That's just the question. What _do_ you want to +do?" + +"Yes, what do you want to do?" panted her Mother. + +"I want to make a Christmas for myself!" said Flame. "Oh, of course, I +know perfectly well," she agreed, "that I could go to a dozen places +in the Parish and be cry-babied over for my presumable loneliness. And +probably I _should_ cry a little," she wavered, "towards the +dessert--when the plum pudding came in and it wasn't like +Mother's.--But if I made a Christmas of my own--" she rallied +instantly. "Everything about it would be brand-new and unassociated! I +tell you I _want_ to make a Christmas of my own! It's the chance of a +life-time! Even Father sees that it's the chance of a life-time!" + +"Do you?" demanded his wife a bit pointedly. + +"_Honk-honk!_" screamed the motor at the door. + +"Oh, dear me, whatever in the world shall I do?" cried Flame's Mother. +"I'm almost distracted! I'm--" + +"When in Doubt do as the Doubters do," suggested Flame's Father quite +genially. "Choose the most doubtful doubt on the docket and--Flame's got +a pretty level head," he interrupted himself very characteristically. + +"No young girl has a level heart," asserted Flame's Mother. "I'm so +worried about the Lay Reader." + +"Lay Reader?" murmured her Father. Already he had crossed the +threshold into the hall and was rummaging through an over-loaded hat +rack for his fur coat. "Why, yes," he called back, "I quite forgot to +ask. Just what kind of a Christmas is it, Flame, that you want to +make?" With unprecedented accuracy he turned at the moment to force +his wife's arms into the sleeves of her own fur coat. + +Twice Flame rolled up her cuffs and rolled them down again before she +answered. + +"I--I want to make a Surprise for Miss Flora," she confided. + +"_Honk-honk!_" urged the automobile. + +"For Miss Flora?" gasped her Mother. + +"Miss Flora?" echoed her Father. + +"Why, at the Rattle-Pane House, you know!" rallied Flame. "Don't you +remember that I called there this afternoon? It--it looked rather +lonely there.--I--think I could fix it." + +"Honk-honk-honk!" implored the automobile. + +"But who _is_ this Miss Flora?" cried her Mother. "I never heard +anything so ridiculous in my life! How do we know she's respectable?" + +"Oh, my dear," deprecated Flame's Father. "Just as though the owners +of the Rattle-Pane House would rent it to any one who wasn't +respectable!" + +"Oh, she's _very_ respectable," insisted Flame. "Of a lineage so +distinguished--" + +"How old might this paragon be?" queried her Father. + +"Old?" puzzled Flame. To her startled mind two answers only presented +themselves.... Should she say "Oh, she's only just weaned," or +"Well,--she was invented about 1406?" Between these two dilemmas a +single compromise suggested itself. "She's _awfully_ wrinkled," said +Flame; "that is--her face is. All wizened up, I mean." + +"Oh, then of course she _must_ be respectable," twinkled Flame's +Father. + +"And is related in some way," persisted Flame, "to Edward the +2nd--Duke of York." + +"Of that guarantee of respectability I am, of course, not quite so +sure," said her Father. + +With a temperish stamping of feet, an infuriate yank of the door-bell, +Uncle Wally's chauffeur announced that the limit of his endurance had +been reached. + +Blankly Flame's Mother stared at Flame's Father. Blankly Flame's +Father returned the stare. + +"Oh, _p-l-e-a-s-e_!" implored Flame. Her face was crinkled like fine +crepe. + +"Smooth out your nose!" ordered her Mother. On the verge of +capitulation the same familiar fear assailed her. "Will you promise +not to see the Lay Reader?" she bargained. + +"--Yes'm," said Flame. + + + + +PART II + + +It's a dull person who doesn't wake up Christmas Morning with a +curiously ticklish sense of Tinsel in the pit of his stomach!--A sort +of a Shine! A kind of a Pain! + + "Glisten and Tears, + Pang of the years." + +That's Christmas! + +So much was born on Christmas Day! So much has died! So much is yet to +come! Balsam-Scented, with the pulse of bells, how the senses sing! +Memories that wouldn't have batted an eye for all the Gabriel Trumpets in +Eternity leaping to life at the sound of a twopenny horn! Merry Folk who +were with us once and are no more! Dream Folk who have never been with us +yet but will be some time! Ache of old carols! Zest of new-fangled games! +Flavor of puddings! Shine of silver and glass! The pleasant frosty smell of +the Express-man! The Gift Beautiful! The Gift Dutiful! The Gift that Didn't +Come! _Heigho_! Manger and Toy-Shop,--Miracle and Mirth,-- + + "Glisten and Tears, + LAUGH at the years!" + +_That's_ Christmas! + +Flame Nourice certainly was willing to laugh at the years. Eighteen +usually is! + +Waking at Dawn two single thoughts consumed her,--the Lay Reader, and +the humpiest of the express packages downstairs. + +The Lay Reader's name was Bertrand. "Bertrand the Lay Reader," Flame +always called him. The rest of the Parish called him Mr. Laurello. + +It was the thought of Bertrand the Lay Reader that made Flame laugh +the most. + +"As long as I've promised most faithfully not to see him," she +laughed, "how can I possibly go to church? For the first Christmas in +my life," she laughed, "I won't have to go to church!" + +With this obligation so cheerfully canceled, the exploration of the +humpiest express package loomed definitely as the next task on the +horizon. + +Hoping for a fur coat from her Father, fearing for a set of +encyclopedias from her Mother, she tore back the wrappings with eager +hands only to find,--all-astonished, and half a-scream,--a gay, gauzy +layer of animal masks nosing interrogatively up at her. Less practical +surely than the fur coat,--more amusing, certainly, than +encyclopedias,--the funny "false faces" grinned up at her with a +curiously excitative audacity. Where from?--No identifying card! What +for? No conceivable clew!--Unless perhaps just on general principles a +donation for the Sunday School Christmas Tree?--But there wasn't going +to be any tree! Tentatively she reached into the box and touched the +fiercely striped face of a tiger, the fantastically exaggerated beak +of a red and green parrot. "U-m-m-m," mused Flame. "Whatever in the +world shall I do with them?" Then quite abruptly she sank back on her +heels and began to laugh and laugh and laugh. Even the Lay Reader had +not received such a laughing But even to herself she did not say just +what she was laughing at. It was a time for deeds, it would seem, and +not for words. + +Certainly the morning was very full of deeds! + +There was, of course, a present from her Mother to be opened,--warm, +woolly stockings and things like that. But no one was ever swerved +from an original purpose by trying on warm, woolly stockings. And from +her Father there was the most absurd little box no bigger than your +nose marked, "For a week in New York," and stuffed to the brim with +the sweetest bright green dollar bills. But, of course, you couldn't +try those on. And half the Parish sent presents. But no Parish ever +sent presents that needed to be tried on. No gay, fluffy scarfs,--no +lacey, frivolous pettiskirts,--no bright delaying hat-ribbons! Just +books,--illustrated poems usually, very wholesome pickles,--and always +a huge motto to recommend, "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men."--To +"Men"?--Why not to Women?--Why not at least to "_Dogs_?" questioned +Flame quite abruptly. + +Taken all in all it was not a Christmas Morning of sentiment but a +Christmas morning of _works_! Kitchen works, mostly! Useful, flavorous +adventures with a turkey! A somewhat nervous sally with an apple pie! +Intermittently, of course, a few experiments with flour paste! A +flaire or two with a paint brush! An errand to the attic! Interminable +giggles! + +Surely it was four o'clock before she was even ready to start for the +Rattle-Pane House. And "starting" is by no means the same as arriving. +Dragging a sledful of miscellaneous Christmas goods an eighth of a +mile over bare ground is not an easy task. She had to make three +tugging trips. And each start was delayed by her big gray pussy cat +stealing out to try to follow her. And each arrival complicated by the +yelpings and leapings and general cavortings of four dogs who didn't +see any reason in the world why they shouldn't escape from their +forced imprisonment in the shed-yard and prance home with her. Even +with the third start and the third arrival finally accomplished, the +crafty cat stood waiting for her on the steps of the Rattle-Pane +House,--back arched, fur bristled, spitting like some new kind of +weather-cock at the storm in the shed-yard, and had to be thrust quite +unceremoniously into a much too small covered basket and lashed down +with yards and yards of tinsel that was needed quite definitely for +something else.--It isn't just the way of the Transgressor that's +hard.--Nobody's way is any too easy! + +The door-key, though, was exactly where the old Butler had said it +would be,--under the door mat, and the key itself turned astonishingly +cordially in the rusty old lock. Never in her whole little life having +owned a door-key to her own house it seemed quite an adventure in +itself to be walking thus possessively through an unfamiliar hall +into an absolutely unknown kitchen and goodness knew what on either +side and beyond. + +Perfectly simply too as the old Butler had promised, the four dog +dishes, heaping to the brim, loomed in prim line upon the kitchen +table waiting for distribution. + +"U-m-m," sniffed Flame. "Nothing but mush! _Mush_!--All over the world +to-day I suppose--while their masters are feasting at other people's +houses on puddings and--and cigarettes! How the poor darlings must +suffer! Locked in sheds! Tied in yards! Stuffed down cellar!" + +"Me-o-w," twinged a plaintive hint from the hallway just outside. + +"Oh, but cats are different," argued Flame. "So soft, so plushy, so +spineless! Cats were _meant_ to be stuffed into things." + +Without further parleying she doffed her red tam and sweater, donned a +huge white all-enveloping pinafore, and started to ameliorate as best +she could the Christmas sufferings of the "poor darlings" immediately +at hand. + +It was at least a yellow kitchen,--or had been once. In all that gray, +dank, neglected house, the one suggestion of old sunshine. + +"We shall have our dinner here," chuckled Flame. "After the carols--we +shall have our dinner here." + +Very boisterously in the yard just outside the window the four dogs +scuffled and raced for sheer excitement and joy at this most +unexpected advent of human companionship. Intermittently from time to +time by the aid of old boxes or barrels they clawed their way up to +the cobwebby window-sill to peer at the strange proceedings. +Intermittently from time to time they fell back into the frozen yard +in a chaos of fur and yelps. + +By five o'clock certainly the faded yellow kitchen must have looked +very strange, even to a dog! + +Straight down its dingy, wobbly-floored center stretched a long table +cheerfully spread with "the Rev. Mrs. Flamande Nourice's" second best +table cloth. Quaint high-backed chairs dragged in from the shadowy +parlor circled the table. A pleasant china plate gleamed like a +hand-painted moon before each chair. At one end of the table loomed a +big brown turkey; at the other, the appropriate vegetables. Pies, +cakes, and doughnuts, interspersed themselves between. Green wreaths +streaming with scarlet ribbons hung nonchalantly across every +chair-top. Tinsel garlands shone on the walls. In the doorway reared a +hastily constructed mimicry of a railroad crossing sign. + +[Illustration] + +Directly opposite and conspicuously placed above the rusty stove-pipe +stretched the Parish's Gift Motto--duly re-adjusted. + + "_Peace_ on _Earth_, Good Will to _Dogs_." + +"Fatuously silly," admitted Flame even to herself. "But yet it does +add something to the Gayety of Rations!" + +Stepping aside for a single thrilling moment to study the full effect +of her handiwork, the first psychological puzzle of her life smote +sharply across her senses. Namely, that you never really get the whole +fun out of anything unless you are absolutely alone.--But the very +first instant you find yourself absolutely alone with a +Really-Good-Time you begin to twist and turn and hunt about for +somebody Very Special to share it with you! + +The only "Very Special" person that Flame could think of was "Bertrand +the Lay Reader." + +All a-blush with the sheer mental surprise of it she fled to the shed +door to summon the dogs. + +"Maybe even the dogs won't come!" she reasoned hectically. "Maybe +nothing will come! Maybe that's always the way things happen when you +get your own way about something else!" + +Like a blast from the Arctic the Christmas twilight swept in on her. +It crisped her cheeks,--crinkled her hair! Turned her spine to a wisp +of tinsel! All outdoors seemed suddenly creaking with frost! All +indoors, with _unknownness_! + +"Come, Beautiful-Lovely!" she implored. "Come, Lopsy! Miss Flora! +Come, Blunder-Blot!'" + +But there was really no need of entreaty. A turn of the door-knob would +have brought them! Leaping, loping, four abreast, they came plunging +like so many North Winds to their party! Streak of Snow,--Glow of +Fire,--Frozen Mud--Sun-Spot!--Yelping-mouthed--slapping-tailed! Backs +bristling! Legs stiffening! Wolf Hound, Setter, Bull Dog, +Dalmatian,--each according to his kind, hurtling, crowding! + +"Oh, dear me, dear me," struggled Flame. "Maybe a carol would calm +them." + +To a certain extent a carol surely did. The hair-cloth parlor of the +Rattle-Pane House would have calmed anything. And the mousey smell of +the old piano fairly jerked the dogs to its senile old ivory keyboard. +Cocking their ears to its quavering treble notes,--snorting their +nostrils through its gritty guttural basses, they watched Flame's +facile fingers sweep from sound to sound. + +"Oh, what a--glorious lark!" quivered Flame. "What a--a _lonely_ +glorious lark!" + +Timidly at first but with an increasing abandon, half laughter and +half tears, the clear young soprano voice took up its playful +paraphrase, + + "God rest you merrie--animals! + Let nothing you dismay!" + +caroled Flame. + + "For--" + +It was just at this moment that Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf +Hound,--muzzled lifted, eyes rolling, jabbed his shrill nose into +space and harmony with a carol of his own,--octaves of agony,--Heaven +knows what of ecstasy,--that would have hurried an owl to its nest, a +ghoul to a moving picture show! + +"Wow-Wow--_Wow_!" caroled Beautiful-Lovely. +"Ww--ow--Ww--ow--_Ww--Oo--Wwwww_!" + +As Flame's hands dropped from the piano the unmistakable creak of red +wheels sounded on the frozen driveway just outside. + +No one but "Bertrand the Lay Reader" drove a buggy with red wheels! To +the infinite scandalization of the Parish--no one but "Bertrand the +Lay Reader" drove a buggy with red wheels!--Fleet steps sounded +suddenly on the path! Startled fists beat furiously on the door! + +"What is it? What is it?" shouted a familiar voice. "Whatever in the +world is happening? Is it _murder_? Let me in! _Let me in!_" + +"Sil--ly!" hissed Flame through a crack in the door. "It's nothing but +a party! Don't you know a--a party when you hear it?" + +For an instant only, blank silence greeted her confidence. Then +"Bertrand the Lay Reader" relaxed in an indisputably genuine gasp of +astonishment. + +"Why! Why, is that you, Miss Flame?" he gasped. "Why, I thought it was +a murder! Why--Why, whatever in the world are you doing here?" + +"I--I'm having a party," hissed Flame through the key-hole. + +"A--a--party?" stammered the Lay Reader. "Open the door!" + +"No, I--can't," said Flame. + +"Why not?" demanded the Lay Reader. + +Helplessly in the darkness of the vestibule Flame looked up,--and +down,--and sideways,--but met always in every direction the memory of +her promise. + +"I--I just can't," she admitted a bit weakly. "It wouldn't be +convenient.--I--I've got trouble with my eyes." + +"Trouble with your eyes?" questioned the Lay Reader. + +"I didn't go away with my Father and Mother," confided Flame. + +"No,--so I notice," observed the Lay Reader. "_Please_ open the door!" + +"Why?" parried Flame. + +"I've been looking for you everywhere," urged the Lay Reader. "At the +Senior Warden's! At all the Vestrymen's houses! Even at the Sexton's! +I knew you didn't go away! The Garage Man told me there were only +two!--I thought surely I'd find you at your own house.--But I only +found sled tracks." + +"That was me,--I," mumbled Flame. + +"And then I heard these awful screams," shuddered the Lay Reader. + +"That was a Carol," said Flame. + +"A Carol?" scoffed the Lay Reader. "Open the door!" + +"Well--just a crack," conceded Flame. + +It was astonishing how a man as broad-shouldered as the Lay Reader +could pass so easily through a crack. + +Conscience-stricken Flame fled before him with her elbow crooked +across her forehead. + +"Oh, my eyes! My eyes!" she cried. + +"Well, really," puzzled the Lay Reader. "Though I claim, of course, to +be ordinarily bright--I had never suspected myself of being actually +dazzling." + +"Oh, you're not bright at all," protested Flame. "It's just my +promise.--I promised Mother not to see you!" + +"Not to see _me_?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was astonishing how +almost instantaneously a man as purely theoretical as the Lay Reader +was supposed to be, thought of a perfectly practical solution to the +difficulty. "Why--why we might tie my big handkerchief across your +eyes," he suggested. "Just till we get this mystery straightened +out.--Surely there is nothing more or less than just plain +righteousness in--that!" + +"What a splendid idea!" capitulated Flame. "But, of course, if I'm +absolutely blindfolded," she wavered for a second only, "you'll have +to lead me by the hand." + +"I could do that," admitted the Lay Reader. + +With the big white handkerchief once tied firmly across her eyes, +Flame's last scruple vanished. + +"Well, you see," she began quite precipitously, "I _did_ think it +would be such fun to have a party!--A party all my own, I mean!--A +party just exactly as I wanted it! No Parish in it at all! Or good +works! Or anything! Just _fun_!--And as long as Mother and Father had +to go away anyway--" Even though the blinding bandage the young eyes +seemed to lift in a half wistful sort of appeal. "You see there's some +sort of property involved," she confided quite impulsively. "Uncle +Wally's making a new will. There's a corn-barn and a private chapel +and a collection of Chinese lanterns and a piebald pony principally +under dispute.--Mother, of course thinks we ought to have the +corn-barn. But Father can't decide between the Chinese lanterns and +the private chapel.--Personally," she sighed, "I'm hoping for the +piebald pony." + +"Yes, but this--party?" prodded the Lay Reader. + +"Oh, yes,--the party--" quickened Flame. + +"Why have it in a deserted house?" questioned the Lay Reader with some +incisiveness. + +Even with her eyes closely bandaged Flame could see perfectly clearly +that the Lay Reader was really quite troubled. + +"Oh, but you see it isn't exactly a deserted house," she explained. + +"Who lives here?" demanded the Lay Reader. + +"I don't know--exactly," admitted Flame. "But the Butler is a friend +of mine and--" + +"The--Butler is a friend of yours?" gasped the Lay Reader. Already, if +Flame could only have seen it, his head was cocked with sudden +intentness towards the parlor door. "There is certainly something very +strange about all this," he whispered a bit hectically. "I could +almost have sworn that I heard a faint scuffle,--the horrid sound of a +person--strangling." + +"Strangling?" giggled Flame. "Oh, that is just the sound of Miss +Flora's 'girlish glee'! If she'd only be content to chew the corner of +the piano cover! But when she insists on inhaling it, too!" + +"Miss Flora?" gasped the Lay Reader. "Is this a Mad House?" + +"Miss Flora is a--a dog," confided Flame a bit coolly. "I +neglected--it seems--to state that this is a dog-party that I'm +having." + +"_Dogs_?" winced the Lay Reader. "Will they bite?" + +"Only if you don't trust them," confided Flame. + +"But it's so hard to trust a dog that will bite you if you don't trust +him," frowned the Lay Reader. "It makes such a sort of a--a vicious +circle, as it were." + +"Vicious Circe?" mused Flame, a bit absent-mindedly. "No, I don't +think it's nice at all to call Miss Flora a 'Vicious Circe.'" It was +Flame's turn now to wince back a little. "I--I hate people who hate +dogs!" she cried out quite abruptly. + +"Oh, I don't hate them," lied the Lay Reader like a gentleman, "it's +only that--that--. You see a dog bit me once!" he confided with +significant emphasis. + +"I--bit a dentist--once," mused Flame without any emphasis at all. + +"Oh, but I say, Miss Flame," deprecated the Lay Reader. "That's +different! When a dog bites you, you know, there's always more or less +question whether he was mad or not." + +"There doesn't seem to have been any question at all," mused Flame, +"that _you_ were mad! Did you have _your_ head sent off to be +investigated or anything?" + +"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," implored the Lay Reader, "I tell you I _like_ +dogs,--good dogs! I assure you I'm very--oh, very much interested in +this dog party of yours! Such a quaint idea! So--so--! If I could be +of any possible assistance?" he implored. + +"Maybe you could be," relaxed Flame ever so faintly. "But if you're +really coming to my party," she stiffened again, "you've got to behave +like my party!" + +"Why, of course I'll behave like your party!" laughed the Lay Reader. + +"There _is_ a problem," admitted Flame. "Five problems, to be +perfectly accurate.--Four dogs, and a cat in the wood-shed." + +"And a cat in the wood-shed?" echoed the Lay Reader quite idiotically. + +"The table is set," affirmed Flame. "The places, all ready!--But I +don't know how to get the dogs into their chairs!--They run around so! +They yelp! They jump!--They haven't had a mouthful to eat, you see, +since last night, this time!--And when they once see the turkey +I'm--I'm afraid they'll stampede it." + +"Turkey?" quizzed the Lay Reader who had dined that day on corned +beef. + +"Oh, of course, mush was what they were intended to have," admitted +Flame. "Piles and piles of mush! Extra piles and piles of mush I +should judge because it was Christmas Day!... But don't you think mush +does seem a bit dull?" she questioned appealingly. "For Christmas +Day? Oh, I did think a turkey would taste so good!" + +"It certainly would," conceded the Lay Reader. + +"So if you'd help me--" wheedled Flame, "it would be well-worth +staying blindfolded for.... For, of course, I shall have to stay +blindfolded. But I can see a little of the floor," she admitted, +"though I couldn't of course break my promise to my Mother by seeing +you." + +"No, certainly not," admitted the Lay Reader. + +"Otherwise--" murmured Flame with a faint gesture towards the door. + +"I will help you," said the Lay Reader. + +"Where is your hand?" fumbled Flame. + +"_Here_!" attested the Lay Reader. + +"Lead us to the dogs!" commanded Flame. + +Now the Captain of a ship feels genuinely obligated, it would seem, to +go down with his ship if tragic circumstances so insist. But he +never,--so far as I've ever heard, felt the slightest obligation +whatsoever to go down with another captain's ship,--to be martyred in +short for any job not distinctly his own. So Bertrand Lorello,--who +for the cause he served, wouldn't have hesitated an instant probably, +to be torn by Hindoo lions,--devoured by South Sea cannibals,--fallen +upon by a chapel spire,--trampled to death even at a church rummage +sale,--saw no conceivable reason at the moment for being eaten by dogs +at a purely social function. + +Even groping through a balsam-scented darkness with one hand clasping +the thrilly fingers of a lovely young girl, this distaste did not +altogether leave him. + +"This--this mush that you speak of?" he questioned quite abruptly. +"With the dogs as--as nervous as you say,--so unfortunately liable to +stampede? Don't you think that perhaps a little mush served first,--a +good deal of mush I would say, served first,--might act as a--as a +sort of anesthetic?... Somewhere in the past I am almost sure I have +read that mush in sufficient quantities, you understand, is really +quite a--quite an anesthetic." + +Very palpably in the darkness he heard a single throaty swallow. + +"Lead us to the--mush," said Flame. + +In another instant the door-knob turned in his hand, and the cheerful +kitchen lamp-light,--glitter of tinsel,--flare of red ribbons,--savor +of foods, smote sharply on him. + +"Oh, I say, how _jolly_!" cried the Lay Reader. + +"Don't let me bump into anything!" begged the blindfolded Flame, still +holding tight to his hand. + +"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," kindled the entranced Lay Reader, "it's _you_ +that look the jolliest! All in white that way! I've never seen you +wear _that_ to church, have I?" + +"This is a pinafore," confided Flame coolly. "A bungalow apron, the +fashion papers call it.... No, you've never seen me wear--this to +church." + +"O--h," said the Lay Reader. + +"Get the mush," said Flame. + +"The what?" asked the Lay Reader. + +"It's there on the table by the window," gestured Flame. "Please set +all four dishes on the floor,--each dish, of course, in a separate +corner," ordered Flame. "There is a reason.... And then open the +parlor door." + +"Open the parlor door?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was no mere +grammatical form of speech but a real query in the Lay Reader's mind. + +"Well, maybe I'd better," conceded Flame. "Lead me to it." + +Roused into frenzy by the sound of a stranger's step, a stranger's +voice, the four dogs fumed and seethed on the other side of the panel. + +"Sniff--Sniff--_Snort_!" the Red Setter sucked at the crack in the +door. + +"Woof! Woof! _Woof_!" roared the big Wolf Hound. + +"Slam! Bang! Slash!" slapped the Dalmatian's crisp weight. + +"Yi! Yi! Yi!" sang the Bull Dog. + +"Hush! _Hush_, Dogs!" implored Flame. "This is Father's Lay Reader!" + +"Your--Lay Reader!" contradicted the young man gallantly. It _was_ +pretty gallant of him, wasn't it? Considering everything? + +In another instant four _shapes_ with teeth in them came hurtling +through! + +If Flame had never in her life admired the Lay Reader she certainly +would have admired him now for the sheer cold-blooded foresight which +had presaged the inevitable reaction of the dogs upon the mush and the +mush upon the dogs. With a single sniff at his heels, a prod of paws +in his stomach, the onslaught swerved--and passed. Guzzlingly from +four separate corners of the room issued sounds of joy and +fulfillment. + +With an impulse quite surprising even to herself Flame thrust both +hands into the Lay Reader's clasp. + +"You _are_ nice, aren't you?" she quickened. In an instant of weakness +one hand crept up to the blinding bandage, and recovered its honor as +instantly. "Oh, I do wish I _could_ see you," sighed Flame. "You're so +good-looking! Even Mother thinks you're _so_ good-looking!... Though +she does get awfully worked up, of course, about your 'amorous eyes'!" + +"Does your Mother think I've got ... 'amorous eyes'?" asked the Lay +Reader a bit tersely. Behind his spectacles as he spoke the orbs in +question softened and glowed like some rare exotic bloom under glass. +"Does your Mother ... think I've got amorous eyes?" + +"Oh, yes!" said Flame. + +"And your Father?" drawled the Lay Reader. + +"Why, Father says _of course_ you've got 'amorous eyes'!" confided +Flame with the faintest possible tinge of surprise at even being asked +such a question. "That's the funny thing about Mother and Father," +chuckled Flame. "They're always saying the same thing and meaning +something entirely different by it. Why, when Mother says with her +mouth all pursed up, 'I have every reason to believe that Mr. Lorello +is engaged to the daughter of the Rector in his former Parish,' Father +just puts back his head and howls, and says, 'Why, _of course_, Mr. +Lorello is engaged to the daughter of the Rector in his former Parish! +All Lay Readers...." + +In the sudden hush that ensued a faint sense of uneasiness flickered +through Flame's shoulders. + +"Is it you that have hushed? Or the dogs?" she asked. + +"The dogs," said the Lay Reader. + +Very cautiously, absolutely honorably, Flame turned her back to the +Lay Reader, and lifted the bandage just far enough to prove the Lay +Reader's assertion. + +Bulging with mush the four dogs lay at rest on rounding sides with +limp legs straggling, or crouched like lions' heads on paws, with +limpid eyes blinking above yawny mouths. + +"O--h," crooned Flame. "How sweet! Only, of course, with what's to +follow," she regretted thriftily, "it's an awful waste of mush.... +Excelsior warmed in the oven would have served just as well." + +At the threat of a shadow across her eyeball she jerked the bandage +back into place. + +"Now, Mr. Lorello," she suggested blithely, "if you'll get the +Bibles...." + +"Bibles?" stiffened the Lay Reader. "Bibles? Why, really, Miss Flame, +I couldn't countenance any sort of mock service! Even just for--for +quaintness,--even for Christmas quaintness!" + +"Mock service?" puzzled Flame. "Bibles?... Oh, I don't want you to +preach out of 'em," she hastened perfectly amiably to explain. "All I +want them for is to plump-up the chairs.... The seats you see are too +low for the dogs.... Oh, I suppose dictionaries would do," she +compromised reluctantly. "Only dictionaries are always so scarce." + +Obediently the Lay Reader raked the parlor book-cases for +"plump-upable" books. With real dexterity he built Chemistries on +Sermons and Ancient Poems on Cook Books till the desired heights were +reached. + +For a single minute more Flame took another peep at the table. + +"Set a chair for yourself directly opposite me!" she ordered. For +sheer hilarious satisfaction her feet began to dance and her hands to +clap. "And whenever I really feel obliged to look," she sparkled, +"you'll just have to leave the table, that's all!... And now...?" +Appraisingly her muffled eye swept the shining vista. "Perfect!" she +triumphed. "Perfect!" Then quite abruptly the eager mouth wilted. +"Why ... Why I've forgotten the carving knife and fork!" she cried out +in real distress. "Oh, how stupid of me!" Arduously, but without +avail, she searched through all the drawers and cupboards of the +Rattle-Pane kitchen. A single alternative occurred to her. "You'll +have to go over to my house and get them,--Mr. Lorello!" she said. +"Were you ever in my kitchen? Or my pantry?" + +"No," admitted the Lay Reader. + +"Well, you'll have to climb in through the window--someway," worried +Flame. "I've mislaid my key somewhere here among all these dishes and +boxes. And the pantry," she explained very explicitly, "is the third +door on the right as you enter.... You'll see a chest of drawers. +Open the second of 'em.... Or maybe you'd better look through all of +them.... Only please ... please hurry!" Imploringly the little head +lifted. + +"If I hurry enough," said the Lay Reader quite impulsively, "may I +have a kiss when I get back?" + +"A kiss?" hooted Flame. In the curve of her cheek a dimple opened +suddenly. "Well ... maybe," said Flame. + +As though the word were wings the Lay Reader snatched his hat and sped +out into the night. + +It was astonishing how all the warm housey air seemed to rush out with +him, and all the shivery frost rush back. + +A little bit listlessly Flame dragged down the bandage from her eyes. + +"It must be the creaks on the stairs that make it so awfully lonely +all of a sudden," argued Flame. "It must be because the dogs snore +so.... No mere man could make it so empty." With a precipitous nudge +of the memory she dashed to the door and helloed to the fast +retreating figure. "Oh, Bertrand! Bertrand!" she called, "I got sort +of mixed up. It's the second door on the left! And if you don't find +'em there you'd better go up in Mother's room and turn out the silver +chest! _Hurry_!" + +Rallying back to the bright Christmas kitchen for the real business at +hand, an accusing blush rose to the young spot where the dimple had +been. + +"Oh, Shucks!" parried Flame. "I kissed a Bishop before I was +five!--What's a Lay Reader?" As one humanely willing to condone the +future as well as the past she rolled up her white sleeves without +further introspection, and dragged out from the protecting shadow of +the sink the "humpiest box" which had so excited her emotions at home +in an earlier hour of the day. Cracklingly under her eager fingers the +clumsy cover slid off, exposing once more to her enraptured gaze the +gay-colored muslin layer of animal masks leering fatuously up at her. + +Only with her hand across her mouth did she keep from crying out. Very +swiftly her glance traveled from the grinning muslin faces before her +to the solemn fur faces on the other side of the room. The hand across +her mouth tightened. + +"Why, it's something like Creation," she giggled. "This having to +decide which face to give to which animal!" + +As expeditiously as possible she made her selection. + +"Poor Miss Flora must be so tired of being so plain," she thought. +"I'll give her the first choice of everything! Something really +lovely! It can't help resting her!" + +With this kind idea in mind she selected for Miss Flora a canary's +face.--Softly yellow! Bland as treacle! Its swelling, tender muslin +throat fairly reeking with the suggestion of innocent song! No one +gazing once upon such ornithological purity would ever speak a harsh +word again, even to a sparrow! + +Nudging Miss Flora cautiously from her sonorous nap, Flame beguiled +her with half a doughnut to her appointed chair, boosted her still +cautiously to her pinnacle of books, and with various swift +adjustments of fasteners, knotting of tie-strings,--an extra breathing +hole jabbed through the beak, slipped the canary's beautiful blond +countenance over Miss Flora's frankly grizzled mug. + +For a single terrifying instant Miss Flora's crinkled sides +tightened,--a snarl like ripped silk slipped through her straining +lungs. Then once convinced that the mask was not a gas-box she +accepted the liberty with reasonable _sang-froid_ and sat blinking +beadily out through the canary's yellow-rimmed eye-sockets with frank +curiosity towards such proceedings as were about to follow. It was +easy to see she was accustomed to sitting in chairs. + +For the Wolf Hound Flame chose a Giraffe's head. Certain anatomical +similarities seemed to make the choice wise. With a long vividly +striped stockinet neck wrinkling like a mousquetaire glove, the neat +small head that so closely fitted his own neat small head, the +tweaked, interrogative ears,--Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf Hound, reared +up majestically in his own chair. He also, once convinced that the +mask was not a gas-box, resigned himself to the inevitable, and +corporeally independent of such vain props as Chemistries or Sermons, +lolled his fine height against the mahogany chair-back. + +To Blunder-Blot, the trim Dalmatian, Flame assigned the Parrot's head, +arrogantly beaked, gorgeously variegated, altogether querulous. + +For Lopsy, the crafty Setter, she selected a White Rabbit's artless, +pink-eared visage. + +Yet out of the whole box of masks it had been the Bengal Tiger's +fiercely bewhiskered visage that had fascinated Flame the most. +Regretfully from its more or less nondescript companions, she picked +up the Bengal Tiger now and pulled at its real, bristle-whiskers. In +one of the chairs a dog stirred quite irrelevantly. Cocking her own +head towards the wood-shed Flame could not be perfectly sure whether +she heard a twinge of cat or a twinge of conscience. The unflinching +glare of the Bengal Tiger only served to increase her self-reproach. + +"After all," reasoned Flame, "it would be easy enough to set another +place! And pile a few extra books!... I'm almost sure I saw a black +plush bag in the parlor.... If the cat could be put in something like +a black plush bag,--something perfectly enveloping like that? So that +not a single line of its--its figure could be observed?... And it had +a new head given it? A perfectly sufficient head--like a Bengal +Tiger?--I see no reason why--" + +In five minutes the deed was accomplished. Its lovely sinuous "figure" +reduced to the stolid contour of a black plush work-bag, its small +uneasy head thrust into the roomy muslin cranium of the Bengal Tiger, +the astonished Cat found herself slumping soggily on a great teetering +pile of books, staring down as best she might through the Bengal +Tiger's ear at the weirdest assemblage of animals which any domestic +cat of her acquaintance had ever been forced to contemplate. + +Coincidental with the appearance of the Cat a faint thrill passed +through the rest of the company.... Nothing very much! No more, no +less indeed, than passes through any company at the introduction of +purely extraneous matter. From the empty plate which she had +commandeered as a temporary pillow the Yellow Canary lifted an +interrogative beak.... That was all! At Flame's left, the White-Haired +Rabbit emitted an incongruous bark.... Scarcely worth reporting! +Across the table the Giraffe thumped a white, plumy tail. Thoughtfully +the Parrot's hooked nose slanted slightly to one side. + +"Oh, I wish Bertrand would come!" fretted Flame. "Maybe this time +he'll notice my 'Christmas Crossing' sign!" she chuckled with sudden +triumph. "Talk about surprises!" Very diplomatically as she spoke she +broke another doughnut in two and drew all the dogs' attention to +herself. Almost hysterical with amusement she surveyed the scene +before her. "Well, at least we can have 'grace' before the Preacher +comes!" she laughed. A step on the gravel walk startled her suddenly. +In a flash she had jerked down the blind-folding handkerchief across +her eyes again, and folding her hands and the doughnut before her +burst softly into paraphrase. + + 'Now we--sit us down to eat + Thrice our share of Flesh and Sweet. + If we should burst before we're through, + Oh what in--Dogdom shall we do?' + +Thus it was that the Master of the House, returning unexpectedly to +his unfamiliar domicile, stumbled upon a scene that might have shaken +the reason of a less sober young man. + +Startled first by the unwonted illumination from his kitchen windows, +and second by the unprecedented aroma of Fir Balsam that greeted him +even through the key-hole of his new front door, his feelings may well +be imagined when groping through the dingy hall he first beheld the +gallows-like structure reared in the kitchen doorway. + +"My God!" he ejaculated, "Barrett is getting ready to hang himself! +Gone mad probably--or something!" + +Curdled with horror he forced himself to the object, only to note with +convulsive relief but increasing bewilderment the cheerful phrasing +and ultimate intent of the structure itself. "'Christmas Crossing'?" +he repeated blankly. "'Look out for Surprises'?--'Shop, Cook, and +Glisten'?" With his hand across his eyes he reeled back slightly +against the wall. "It is I that have gone mad!" he gasped. + +A little uncertain whether he was afraid of What-He-Was-About-to-See, +or whether What-He-Was-About-to-See ought to be afraid of him, he +craned his neck as best he could round the corner of the huge buffet +that blocked the kitchen vista. A fresh bewilderment met his eyes. +Where he had once seen cobwebs flapping grayly across the +chimney-breast loomed now the gay worsted recommendation that _dogs +specially_, should be considered in the Christmas Season. Throwing all +caution aside he passed the buffet and plunged into the kitchen. + +"Oh, _do_ hurry!" cried an eager young voice. "I thought my hair +would be white before you came!" + +Like a man paralyzed he stopped short in his tracks to stare at the +scene before him! The long, bright table! The absolutely formal food! +A blindfolded girl! A perfectly strange blindfolded girl ... with her +dark hair forty years this side of white--_begging him to hurry_!... A +Black Velvet Bag surmounted by a Tiger's head stirring strangely in a +chair piled high with books!... Seated next to the Black Velvet Bag a +Canary as big as a Turkey Gobbler!... A Giraffe stepping suddenly +forward with--with dog-paws thrust into his soup plate!... A White +Rabbit heavily wreathed in holly rousing cautiously from his +cushions!... A Parrot with a twitching black and white short-haired +tail!... An empty chair facing the Girl! _An empty chair facing the +Girl._ + +"If this is _madness_," thought Delcote quite precipitously, "I am at +least the Master of the Asylum!" + +In another instant, with a prodigious stride he had slipped into the +vacant seat. + +"... So sorry to have kept you waiting," he murmured. + +At the first sound of that unfamiliar voice, Flame yanked the +handkerchief from her eyes, took one blank glance at the Stranger, and +burst forth into a muffled, but altogether blood-curdling scream. + +"Oh ... Oh ... Owwwwwwww!" said the scream. + +As though waiting only for that one signal to break the spell of their +enchantment, the Canary leaped upward and grabbed the Bengal Tiger by +his muslin nose,--the White Rabbit sprang to "point" on the cooling +turkey, and the Red and Green Parrot fell to the floor in a desperate +effort to settle once and for all with the black spot that itched so +impulsively on his left shoulder! + +For a moment only, in comparative quiet, the Concerned struggled with +the Concerned. Then true to all Dog Psychology,--absolutely +indisputable, absolutely unalterable, the Non-Concerned leaped in upon +the Non-Concerned! Half on his guard, but wholely on his itch, the +jostled Parrot shot like a catapult across the floor! Lost to all +sense of honor or table-manners the benign-faced Giraffe with his +benign face still towering blandly in the air, burst through his own +neck with a most curious anatomical effect,--locked his teeth in the +Parrot's gay throat and rolled with him under the table in mortal +combat! + +Round and round the room spun the Yellow Canary and the Black Plush +Bag! + +Retreating as best she could from her muslin nose,--the Bengal Tiger +or rather that which was within the Bengal Tiger, waged her war for +Freedom! Ripping like a chicken through its shell she succeeded at +last in hatching one front paw and one hind paw into action. +Wallowing,--stumbling,--rolling,--yowling,--she humped from +mantle-piece to chair-top, and from box to table. + +Loyally the rabbit-eared Setter took up the chase. Mauled in the +scuffle he ran with his meek face upside down! Lost to all reason, +defiant of all morale, he proceeded to flush the game! + +Dish-pans clattered, stools tipped over, pictures banged on the walls! + +From her terrorized perch on the back of her chair Flame watched the +fracas with dilated eyes. + +Hunched in the hug of his own arms the Stranger sat rocking himself to +and fro in uncontrollable, choking mirth,--"ribald mirth" was what +Flame called it. + +"Stop!" she begged. "Stop it! Somebody _stop_ it!" + +It was not until the Black Plush Bag at bay had ripped a red streak +down Miss Flora's avid nose that the Stranger rose to interfere. + +Very definitely then, with quick deeds, incisive words, he separated +the immediate combatants, and ordered the other dogs into submission. + +"Here you, Demon Direful!" he addressed the white Wolf Hound. "Drop +that, Orion!" he shouted to the Irish Setter. "Cut it out, John!" he +thundered at the Coach Dog. + +"Their names are 'Beautiful-Lovely'!" cried Flame. "And 'Lopsy!' and +'Blunder-Blot!'" + +With his hand on the Wolf Hound's collar, the Stranger stopped and +stared up with frank astonishment, not to say resentment, at the +girl's interference. + +"Their names are _what_?" he said. + +Something in the special intonation of the question infuriated +Flame.... Maybe she thought his mouth scornful,--his narrowing +eyes...? Goodness knows what she thought of his suddenly narrowing +eyes! + +In an instant she had jumped from her retreat to the floor. + +"Who are you, anyway?" she demanded. "How dare you come here like +this? Butting into my party!... And--and spoiling my discipline with +the dogs! Who are you, I say?" + +With Demon Direful, alias Beautiful-Lovely tugging wildly at his +restraint, the Stranger's scornful mouth turned precipitously up, +instead of down. + +"Who am I?" he said. "Why, no one special at all except just--the +Master of the House!" + +"_What_?" gasped Flame. + +"Earle Delcote," bowed the Stranger. + +With a little hand that trembled perfectly palpably Flame reached back +to the arm of the big carved chair for support. + +"Why--why, but Mr. Delcote is an old man," she gasped. "I'm almost +sure he's an old man." + +The smile on Delcote's mouth spread suddenly to his eyes. + +"Not yet,--Thank God!" he bowed. + +With a panic-stricken glance at doors, windows, cracks, the chimney +pipe itself, Flame sank limply down in her seat again and gestured +towards the empty place opposite her. + +"Have a--have a chair," she stammered. Great tears welled suddenly to +her eyes. "Oh, I--I know I oughtn't to be here," she struggled. "It's +perfectly ... awful! I haven't the slightest right! Not the slightest! +It's the--the cheekiest thing that any girl in the world ever did!... +But your Butler said...! And he did so want to go away and--And I did +so love your dogs! And I did so want to make _one_ Christmas in the +world just--exactly the way I wanted it! And--and--Mother and Father +will be crazy!... And--and--" + +Without a single glance at anything except herself, the Master of the +House slipped back into his chair. + +"Have a heart!" he said. + +Flame did _not_ accept this suggestion. With a very severe frown and +downcast eyes she sat staring at the table. It seemed a very cheerless +table suddenly, with all the dogs in various stages of disheveled +finery grouped blatantly around their Master's chair. + +"I can at least have my cat," she thought, "my--faithful cat!" In +another instant she had slipped from the table, extracted poor Puss +from a clutter of pans in the back of a cupboard, stripped the last +shred of masquerade from her outraged form, and brought her back +growling and bristling to perch on one arm of the high-backed chair. +"Th--ere!" said Flame. + +Glancing up from this innocent triumph, she encountered the eyes of +the Master of the House fixed speculatively on the big turkey. + +"I'm afraid everything is very cold," she confided with distinctly +formal regret. + +"Not for anything," laughed Delcote quite suddenly, "would I have kept +you waiting--if I had only known." + +Two spots of color glowed hotly in the girl's cheeks. + +"It was not for you I was waiting," she said coldly. + +"N--o?" teased Delcote. "You astonish me. For whom, then? Some +incredible wight who, worse than late--isn't going to show up at +all?... Heaven sent, I consider myself.... How else could so little a +girl have managed so big a turkey?" + +"There ... isn't any ... carving knife," whispered Flame. + +The tears were glistening on her cheeks now instead of just in her +eyes. A less observing man than Delcote might have thought the tears +were really for the carving knife. + +"What? No carving knife?" he roared imperiously. "And the house +guaranteed 'furnished'?" Very furiously he began to hunt all around +the kitchen in the most impossible places. + +"Oh, it's furnished all right," quivered Flame. "It's just chock-full +of dead things! Pressed flowers! And old plush bags! And pressed +flowers! And--and pressed flowers!" + +"Great Heavens!" groaned Delcote. "And I came here to forget 'dead +things'!" + +"Your--your Butler said you'd had misfortunes," murmured Flame. + +"Misfortunes?" rallied Delcote. "I should think I had! In a single +year I've lost health,--money,--most everything I own in the world +except my man and my dogs!" + +"They're ... good dogs," testified Flame. + +"And the Doctor's sent me here for six months," persisted Delcote, +"before he'll even hear of my plunging into things again!" + +"Six months is a--a good long time," said Flame. "If you'd turn the +hems we could make yellow curtains for the parlor in no time at all!" + +"W--we?" stammered Delcote. + +"M--Mother," said Flame. "... It's a long time since any dogs lived in +the Rattle-Pane House." + +"Rattle-_Brain_ house?" bridled Delcote. + +"Rattle-_Pane_ House," corrected Flame. + +A little bit worriedly Delcote returned to his seat. + +"I shall have to rend the turkey, instead of carve it," he said. + +"Rend it," acquiesced Flame. + +In the midst of the rending a dark frown appeared between Delcote's +eyes. + +"These--these guests that you were expecting--?" he questioned. + +"Oh, _stop_!" cried Flame. "Dreadful as I am I never--never would have +dreamed of inviting 'guests'!" + +"This 'guest' then," frowned Delcote. "Was he...?" + +"Oh, you mean ... Bertrand?" flushed Flame. "Oh, truly, I didn't +invite him! He just butted in ... same as you!" + +"Same as ... I?" stammered Delcote. + +"Well..." floundered Flame. "Well ... you know what I mean and ..." + +With peculiar intentness the Master of the House fixed his eyes on the +knotted white handkerchief which Flame had thrown across the corner of +her chair. + +"And is this 'Bertrand' person so ... so dazzling," he questioned, +"that human eye may not look safely upon his countenance?" + +"Bertrand ... dazzling?" protested Flame. "Oh, no! He's really quite +dull.... It was only," she explained with sudden friendliness, "It was +only that I had promised Mother not to 'see' him.... So, of course, +when he butted in I...." + +"O--h," relaxed the Master of the House. With a precipitous flippancy +of manners which did not conform at all to the somewhat tragic +austerity of his face he snatched up his knife and fork and thumped +joyously on the table with the handles of them. "And some people talk +about a country village being dull in the Winter Time!" he chuckled. +"With a Dog's Masquerade and a Robbery at the Rectory all happening +the same evening!" Grabbing her cat in her arms, Flame jerked her +chair back from the table. + +"A--a robbery at the Rectory?" she gasped. "Why--why, I'm the Rectory! +I must go home at once!" + +"Oh, Shucks!" shrugged the Master of the House. "It's all over now. +But the people at the railroad station were certainly buzzing about it +as I came through." + +"B--buzzing about it?" articulated Flame with some difficulty. + +Expeditiously the Master of the House resumed his rending of the +turkey. + +"Are you really from the Rectory?" he questioned. "How amusing.... +Well, there's nothing really you could do about it now.... The +constable and his prisoner are already on their way to the County +Seat--wherever that may be. And a freshly 'burgled' house is rather a +creepy place for a young girl to return to all alone.... Your parents +are away, I believe?" + +"Con--stable ... constable," babbled Flame quite idiotically. + +"Yes, the regular constable was off Christmasing somewhere it seems, +so he put a substitute on his job, a stranger from somewhere. Some +substitute that! No mulling over hot toddies on Christmas night for +him! He _saw_ the marauder crawling in through the Rectory window! He +_saw_ him fumbling now to the left, now to the right, all through the +front hall! He followed him up the stairs to a closet where the silver +was evidently kept! He caught the man red-handed as it were! Or +rather--white-handed," flushed the Master of the House for some quite +unaccountable reason. "To be perfectly accurate," he explained +conscientiously, "he was caught with a pair of--of--" Delicately he +spelt out the word. "With a pair of--c-o-r-s-e-t-s rolled up in his +hand. But inside the roll it seemed there was a solid silver--very +elaborate carving set which the Parish had recently presented. The +wretch was just unrolling it,--them, when he was caught." + +"That was Bertrand!" said Flame. "My Father's Lay Reader." + +It was the man's turn now to jump to his feet. + +"_What_?" he cried. + +"I sent him for the carving knife," said Flame. + +"_What_?" repeated the man. Consternation versus Hilarity went racing +suddenly like a cat-and-dog combat across his eyes. + +"Yes," said Flame. + +From the outside door the sound of furious knocking occurred suddenly. + +"That sounds to me like--like parents' knocking," shivered Flame. + +"It sounds to me like an escaped Lay Reader," said her Host. + +With a single impulse they both started for the door. + +"Don't worry, Little Girl," whispered the young Stranger in the dark +hall. + +"I'll try not to," quivered Flame. + +They were both right, it seemed. + +It was Parents _and_ the Lay Reader. + +All three breathless, all three excited, all three reproachful,--they +swept into the warm, balsam-scented Rattle-Pane House with a gust of +frost, a threat of disaster. + +"F--lame," sighed her Father. + +"Flame!" scolded her Mother. + +"Flame?" implored the Lay Reader. + +"What a pretty name," beamed the Master of the House. "Pray be seated, +everybody," he gestured graciously to left and right,--shoving one +dog expeditiously under the table with his foot, while he yanked +another out of a chair with his least gesticulating hand. "This is +certainly a very great pleasure, I assure you," he affirmed distinctly +to Miss Flamande Nourice. "Returning quite unexpectedly to my new +house this lonely Christmas evening," he explained very definitely to +the Rev. Flamande Nourice, "I can't express to you what it means to me +to find this pleasant gathering of neighbors waiting here to welcome +me! And when I think of the effort _you_ must have made to get here, +Mr. Bertrand," he beamed. "A young man of all your obligations +and--complications--" + +"Pleasant ... gathering of neighbors?" questioned Mrs. Nourice with +some emotion. + +"Oh, I forgot," deprecated the Master of the House with real concern. +"Your Christmas season is not, of course, as inherently 'pleasant' as +one might wish.... I was told at the railroad station how you and Mr. +Nourice had been called away by the illness of a relative." + +"We were called away," confided Mrs. Nourice with increasing asperity, +"called away at considerable inconvenience--by a very sick +relative--to receive the present of a Piebald pony." + +"Oh, goody!" quickened Flame and collapsed again under the weight of +her Mother's glance. + +"And then came this terrible telephone message," shuddered her Mother. +"The implied dishonor of one of your Father's most trusted--most +trusted associates!" + +"I was right in the midst of such an interesting book," deplored her +Father. "And Uncle Wally wouldn't lend it." + +"So we borrowed Uncle Wally's new automobile and started right for +home!" explained her Mother. "It was at the Junction that we made +connections with the Constable and his prisoner." + +"His--victim," intercepted the Lay Reader coldly. + +At this interception everybody turned suddenly and looked at the Lay +Reader. His mouth was twisted very slightly to one side. It gave him a +rather unpleasant snarling expression. If this expression had been +vocal instead of muscular it would have shocked his hearers. + +"Your Father had to go on board the train and identify him," persisted +Flame's Mother. "It was very distressing.... The Constable was most +unwilling to release him. Your Father had to use every kind of an +argument." + +"Every ... kind," mused her Father. "He doesn't even deny being in the +house," continued her Mother, "being in my closet, ... being caught +with a--a--" + +"With a silver carving knife and fork in his hand," intercepted the +Lay Reader hastily. + +"Yet all the time he persists," frowned Flame's Mother, "that there is +some one in the world who can give a perfectly good explanation if +only,--he won't even say 'he or she' but 'it', if only 'it' would." + +Something in the stricken expression of her daughter's face brought a +sudden flicker of suspicion to the Mother's eyes. + +"_You_ don't know anything about this, do you, Flame?" she demanded. +"Is it remotely possible that after your promise to me,--your sacred +promise to me--?" The whole structure of the home,--of mutual +confidence,--of all the Future itself, crackled and toppled in her +voice. + +To the Lay Reader's face, and right _through_ the Lay Reader's face, +to the face of the Master of the House, Flame's glance went homing +with an unaccountable impulse. + +With one elbow leaning casually on the mantle-piece, his narrowed eyes +faintly inscrutable, faintly smiling, it seemed suddenly to the young +Master of the House that he had been waiting all his discouraged years +for just that glance. His heart gave the queerest jump. + +Flame's face turned suddenly very pink. + +Like a person in a dream, she turned back to her Mother. There was a +smile on her face, but even the smile was the smile of a dreaming +person. + +"No--Mother," she said, "I haven't seen Bertrand ... to-day." + +"Why, you're looking right at him now!" protested her exasperated +Mother. + +With a gentle murmur of dissent, Flame's Father stepped forward and +laid his arm across the young girl's shoulder. "She--she may be +looking at him," he said. "But I'm almost perfectly sure that she +doesn't ... see him." + +"Why, whatever in the world do you mean?" demanded his wife. "Whatever +in the world does anybody mean? If there was only another woman here! +A mature ... sane woman! A----" With a flare of accusation she turned +from Flame to the Master of the House. "This Miss Flora that my +daughter spoke of,--where is she? I insist on seeing her! Please +summon her instantly!" + +Crossing genially to the table the Master of the House reached down +and dragged out the Bull Dog by the brindled scuff of her neck. The +scratch on her nose was still bleeding slightly. And one eye was +closed. + +"This is--Miss Flora!" he said. + +Indignantly Flame's Mother glanced at the dog, and then from her +daughter's face to the face of the young man again. + +"And you call _that_--a lady?" she demanded. + +"N--not technically," admitted the young man. + +For an instant a perfectly tense silence reigned. Then from under a +shadowy basket the Cat crept out, shining, sinuous, with extended +paw, and began to pat a sprig of holly cautiously along the floor. + +Yielding to the reaction Flame bent down suddenly and hugging the Wolf +Hound's head to her breast buried her face in the soft, sweet +shagginess. + +"Not sanitary, Mother?" she protested. "Why, they're as sanitary +as--as violets!" + +As though dreaming he were late to church and had forgotten his +vestments, Flame's Father reached out nervously and draped a great +string of ground-pine stole-like about his neck. + +"We all," broke in the Master of the House quite irrelevantly, "seem +to have experienced a slight twinge of irritability--the past few +minutes. Hunger, I've no doubt!... So suppose we all sit down +together to this sumptuous--if somewhat chilled repast? After the soup +certainly, even after very cold soup, all explanations I'm sure will +be--cheerfully and satisfactorily exchanged. Miss--Flame I know has a +most amusing story to tell and--" + +"Oh, yes!" rallied Flame. "And it's almost all about being blindfolded +and sending poor Mr. Lorello--" + +"So if by any chance, Mr.--Mr. Bertrand," interrupted the Master of +the House a bit abruptly, "you happen to have the carving knife and +fork still on your person ... I thought I saw a white string +hanging--" + +"I have!" said the Lay Reader with his first real grin. + +With great formality the Master of the House drew back a chair and +bowed Flame's Mother to it. + +Then suddenly the Red Setter lifted his sensitive nose in the air, and +the spotted Dalmatian bristled faintly across the ridge of his back. +Through the whole room, it seemed, swept a curious cottony sense of +Something-About-to-Happen! Was it that a sound hushed? Or that a hush +decided suddenly to be a sound? + +With a little sharp catch of her breath Flame dashed to the window, +and swung the sash upward! Where once had breathed the drab, dusty +smell of frozen grass and mud quickened suddenly a curious metallic +dampness like the smell of new pennies. + +"Mr. ... Delcote!" she called. + +In an instant his slender form silhouetted darkly with hers in the +open window against the eternal mystery and majesty of a Christmas +night. + +"And _then_ the snow came!" + + +END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs, by +Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD-WILL TO DOGS *** + +***** This file should be named 20213.txt or 20213.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/2/1/20213/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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