THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES fteace on Carrtj, 6oob-%ill to on Cartij, ill to Bogs Cleaner Balloted! 3bfaott Sartor el ~&&.JU*" . liuttmt & Companp COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY Att Rights Reserved First printing October, 1920 Second vrinting October, 1980 Third printing October, 1WO Printed in the United States of America A CONTENTS PAOK PART I 1 PART n 58 eace on arti), to Bogs; PEACE ON EARTH GOOD WILL TO DOGS PARTI 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-bal- sam 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 Peace on Earth 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 finfl in this general com- bination of circumstances some sinister threat of audacity, let me conventionalize [2] Good Will to Dogs 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 re- member? 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 be- ing the first to solve the mysterious holi- day tenancy of the Rattle-Pane House. Breathless with excitement Flame Xourice telephoned the news from the vil- lage post-office. From a pedestal of boxes fairly bulging with red-wheeled go-carts, one keen young elbow rammed for bal- ance into a gay glassy shelf of stick-candy, [3] Peace on Earth 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 fur- niture 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 an- swer 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 [4] Good Will to Dogs absurdity shows equally distinctly what stuff 9he was made of! It was from the summit of a crate of holly-wreaths that she telephoned this time. "Oh Mother - Funny,** apologized Flame, "yoa were perfectly right. No lone dog in the world could possibly man- age 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, wfll make a good name for him! And " "Oh Fl amer panted her Mother. "Dogs do not bakehouses !" [5] Peace on Earth 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 '11 be a Glacier ! And " "Dogs do not take houses," per- sisted Flame's mother. She was still per- sisting it indeed when she returned to her husband's study. Her husband, it seemed, had not no- ticed her absence. Still poring over the tomes and commentaries incidental to the [6] Good Will to Dogs preparation of his next Sunday's sermon his fine face glowed half frown, half ecs- tacy, in the December twilight, while close at his elbow all unnoticed a smoking kero- sine 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 her- self. "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 abso- lutely 'dreamy'? That was FlamePWith renewed tenacity Flame's Mother re- verted to Truth as Truth. 'T)ogs do not Peace on Earth take houses!" she affirmed with unmistak- able 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 pur prac- tical she started for the kitchen. "The M Good Will to Dogs 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-pud- ding " "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 re- minded 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 Peace on Earth would be a shame if anything spoiled! A turkey or a or a fur coat or any- thing." "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 ex- cited young voice. "You are always so horridly right! Lopsy and Beautiful- Lovely and Blunder-Blot are not Christ- masing 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," con- [10] Good Will to Dogs 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!" "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 gutteral Flame's Mother hung up the receiver. Peace on Earth "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 Tarn 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 be- ing 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 " [12] Good Will to Dogs "Oh not a real lady, I think," protested her Mother. "Xot with all those dogs. Xo 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 cro- cheting 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 namef questioned her Mother a bit weakly. "Her name is 'Miss Flora' !" bright- ened Flame, "The Butler has just gone [18] Peace on Earth 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 nerv- ous! 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 any- way! 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 I 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 Good Will to Dogs dogs! Oh Mother, just one little wee single minute at the door? Just long enough to say 'The Rev. and Mrs. Flam- ande 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-ar8-ef When Flame said "Please" like that the word was no more, no less, than the fabled bundle of rags or haunch of veni- son hurled back from a wolf-pursued sleigh to divert the pursuer even tempo- rarily from the main issue. While Flame's Mother paused to consider the particu- larly flavorous sweetness of that entreaty, to picture the flashing eye, the pulsing [15] Peace on Earth throat, the absurdly crinkled nostril that invariably accompanied all Flame's en- treaties, 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 quick- ened her breath. Glint for glint her shin- ing 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. "May- [16] Good Will to Dogs 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! . . . Ill 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 fluc- tuant blackness against immutable black- ness great sweeping pine trees swished weirdly into the horizon. Where the hobbly lane curved darkly into a meadow through a snarl of winter-stricken wil- lows the rattle of a loose window-pane Peace on Earth 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 ! Wheth- er you like it or not ypu're being Christ- mased!" 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 [18] Good Will to Dogs out of the darkness and toppled her over backwards. "Stop, Beautiful-Lovely!** she gasped, "Stop, Lopsy! Behave yourself, Blun- der-Blot! SSKe*! 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 exp edi tiou sly 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 sniff- ing interrogatively at her heels. Her heart was very light, her pulses jumping with excitement, an occasional furry head [19] Peace on Earth 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 un- easiness. "Maybe I'd better not plan to make my call so so very informal," she de- cided suddenly. "Not at a house where there are quite so many dogs! Not at a house where there is a butler . . . any- way!" 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 [20] Good Will to Dogs 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 ral- lied. "Good evening, Miss!" stammered the Butler. "I'veI've come to call," confided Flame. "To call?" stammered the Butler. "Yes," conceded Flame. "I I don't [21] Peace on Earth happen to have an engraved card with me." Before the continued imperturba- bility 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 noth- ing 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 [22] Good Will to Dogs might lie 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 hit stout! And Father starts all right but usually gets thinking of some- thing else! But I . . . ? Kindly an- nounce 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. 9 * Through a maze of bulging packing [28] Peace on Earth boxes and barrels she picked her way to a faded rose-colored chair that flanked the fire-place. That the chair was al- ready 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 boquets of Jong-dead grasses flared wanly on the mantle-piece. And from the tat- tered 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 ." [24] Good Will to Dogs 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 [25] Peace on Earth 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 par- ticularly 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 [26] Good Will to Dogs 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 theyf 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 con- fided. "Mother thinks they're not Oh. of course, I realize that four dogs is a a good many," she hastened dip- lomatically 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 19 with a certain plaintive intentness. "All dogs is too many," he [27] Peace on Earth "Come Christmas time I wishes I was dead." "Wish you were dead ... at Christ- inas Time?" cried Flame. Acute shock was in her protest. "It's the feedin', " sighed the old But- ler. "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- 28] Good Will to Dogs thing," he argued. "Not he! Not Christ- mas 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. Ddcoter quickened Flame. "Mr. Delcote?" (Now at last was the mysteri- ous 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, Bar- ret', he says, 'why innocept 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 [89] Peace on Earth 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 ab- sent 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 [80] Good Will to Dogs 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 . . . ?" Ap- pealingly her eager eyes searched the old Butler's inscrutable face. "Yes'm," repeated the old Butler [31] Peace on Earth 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. [32] Good Will to Dogs "Not such a bad one, either," explained her Mother. "But of course well have to go! The very first thing in the morn- ing! 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! Well 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 ft." 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 detafl is afl 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 [88] Peace on Earth 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 de- lightful 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 off er of [84] Good Will to Dogs 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 pack- ing 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 [35] Peace on Earth 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 long- ish 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 suoh 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. [36] Good Will to Dogs ". . . 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 onceP "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" precipi- tously smitten with shyness they sat for a moment staring blankly around the [37} Peace on Earth 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 [38] Good Will to Dogs a very black frown. "Now take to-mor- row, 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 rela- tives can do is to take extra precautions at holiday tune. . . .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] disap- pointing," he wilted again. [89] Peace on Earth "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 C40] Good Will to Dogs 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 [41] Peace on Earth 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 lank back into his cushions. "N o, no bne, 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! . . [42] Good Will to Dogs No heart aches involved, no hurt feelings, no disappointments for anybody! No- body left out! Nobody dragged in! Why Father-Funny," she cried. "It's an ex- perience 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 al- most 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 Tioller' day and [43] Peace on Earth 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! Some- thing 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 Meriy Aunt Minna' any more than you could wish 'em a 'Merry Good Friday' I" 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 per- suade Mother that . . ." [44] Good Will to Dogs 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 bet- ter but he thinks he's worse! And they want us to come at once I It's something about a new will! The Lawyer tele- phoned! He advises us to come at once! They've sent an automobile for us! It will be here any minute! . . . But what- ever in the world shall we do about Flame?" she cried distractedly. "You know how Uncle Wally feels about hav- ing young people in the house! And she can't possibly go to Aunt Minna's till to- morrow! And . . ." {45] Peace on Earth "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." [46] Good Will to Dogs "Well, how do you feel about him yourself?" veered her Father quite irrel- evantly. "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 my- selfr said Flame. "Oh, of course, I know perfectly well," she agreed, "that Peace on Earth I could go to a dozen places in the Parish and be cry-babied over for my presum- able 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 ral- lied 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'r [48] Good Will to Dogs "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 him- self very characteristically. "No young girl has a level heart," as- serted 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 for- got to ask. Just what kind of a Christ- mas 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 [49] Peace on Earth rolled them down again before she an- swered. "I I want to make a Surprise for Miss Flora," she confided. Cl 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 re- member that I called there this after- noon? It it looked rather lonely there. I think I could fix it." "Honk-honk-honk!" implored the au- tomobile. "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 [50] Good Will to Dogs 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 distin- guished " "How old might this paragon be?" queried her Father. "Old?" puzzled Flame. To her startled mind two answers only pre- sented 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 wrin- kled," said Flame; "that is her face is. All wizened up, I mean." "Oh, then of course she must be re- spectable," twinkled Flame's Father. "And is related in some way," per- [si] Peace on Earth sisted 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. [52] PART II '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 I A sort of a Shine! A kind of a Pain! "Glisten and Tears, Pang of the 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 leap- ing to life at the sound of a twopenny [53] Peace on Earth 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 pud- dings! 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!" Thafs 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 [54] Good Will to Dogs the bumpiest of the express packages downstairs. The Lay Reader's name was Ber- trand. "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 faith- fully 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 can- celed, the exploration of the bumpiest express package loomed definitely as the next task on the horizon. Hoping for a fur coat from her Father, fearing for a set of encyclope- [55] Peace on Earth 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 amus- ing, 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! Un- less perhaps just on general principles a donation for the Sunday School Christmas Tree? But there wasn't go- ing to be any tree! Tentatively she reached into the box and touched the fiercely striped face of a tiger, the fan- tastically exaggerated beak of a red and green parrot. "U-m-m-m," mused Flame. "Whatever in the world shall I do with [56] Good Will to Dogs them?" Then quite abruptly she back on her heek and began to laugh and laugh and laugh, Even the Lay Reader had not received such a laugh- ing. 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 waa very full of deeds! There was, of course, a pi eat 1 nt from her Mother to be opened, warm, woolly stockings and things like that. But no one was erer swerved from an original purpose by trying on warm, woolly stock- ings. And from her Father there tiie most absurd little box no than yukr nose marked. "For a week in Xew York," and staffed to the brim with the sweetest bright green doll&r [67] Peace on Earth bills. But, of course, you couldn't try those on. And half the Parish sent pres- ents. But no Parish ever sent presents that needed to be tried on. No gay, fluffy scarfs, no lacey, frivolous petti- skirts, 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 Christ- mas Morning of sentiment but a Christ- mas 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 [58] I Good Will to Dogs flour paste! A flaire or two with a paint brush I An errand to the attic! Inter- minable 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 de- layed by her big gray pussy cat stealing out to try to follow her. And each ar- rival 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- [59] Peace on Earth 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 uncere- moniously 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 60] Good Will to Dogs through an unfamiliar hall into an abso- lutely unknown kitchen and goodness knew what on either side and beyond. Perfectly simply too as the old Butler had promised, the four dog dishes, heap- ing to the brim, loomed in prim line upon the kitchen table waiting for distribu- tion. "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 spine- [611 Peace on Earth less ! Cats were meant to be stuffed into things." Without further parleying she doffed her red tarn and sweater, donned a huge white all-enveloping pinafore, and started to ameliorate as best she could the Christmas sufferings of the "poor dar- lings" 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 out- side the window the four dogs scuffled and raced for sheer excitement and joy at this most unexpected advent of hu- man companionship. Intermittently [62] Good Will to Dogs 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 yel- low 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. Flarnande Xourice's" second best table cloth. Quaint high-backed chairs dragged in from the shadowy parlor cir- cled 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, [63] Peace on Earth 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. 00 ^ o Christmas Crossing Good Will to Dogs 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 Dog*." "Fatuously silly," admitted Flame even to herself. "But yet it does add some- thing to the Gayety of Rations !" Stepping aside for a single thrilling moment to study the full effect of her handiwork, the first psychological puz- zle of her life smote sharply across her senses. Namely, that you never really get the whole fun out of anything un- less you are absolutely alone. But the very first instant you find yourself abso- lutely alone with a Really-Good-Time you begin to twist and turn and hunt [65] Peace on Earth 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 sur- prise of it she fled to the shed door to summon the dogs. "Maybe even the dogs won't come!" she reasoned hectically. "Maybe noth- ing 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 unknown- ness! [66] Good Will to Dogs "Come, Beautiful-Lovely!" she im- plored. "Come, Lopsy! Miss Flora! Come, Bhinder-Blotr* But there was really no need of en- treaty. A turn of the door-knob would have brought them! Leaping, loping, four abreast, they came ffca^fog like so many Xorth 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 Iciinlj 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 [87] Peace on Earth the mousey smell of the old piano fairly jerked the dogs to its senile old ivory key-board. Cocking their ears to its quavering treble notes, snorting their nostrils through its gritty guttural basses, they watched Flame's facile fin- gers 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. **T? It was just at this moment that Beau- tiful-Lovely, the Wolf Hound, muz- [68] Good Will to Dogs 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! "Wow-Wow Wow!" caroled Beau- tiful-Lovely. "Ww ow Ww ow Ww Oo WwwuxcF 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 Read- er" 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! [69] Peace on Earth "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 indis- putably 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!" [70] Good Will to Dogs "No, I can't," said Flame. "Why not?" demanded the Lay Reader. Helplessly in the darkness of the ves- tibule 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 every- where," urged the Lay Reader. "At the Senior Warden's! At all the Vestry- [Tl] Peace on EartH 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 Jiouse. 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-sticken Flame fled before him with her elbow crooked across her forehead. "Oh, my eyes! My eyes!" she cried. .[72] Good Will to Dogs "Well, realty," puzzled the Lay Reader. "Though I claim, of course, to be ordinarily bright I had never sus- pected myself of being actually daz- zling." "Oh, you're not bright at all," pro- tested Flame. "It's just my promise. I promised Mother not to see youT "Not to see me?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was astonishing how almost instantaneously a man as purely the- oretical as the Lay Reader was supposed to be, thought of a perfectly practical so- lution 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 ideaP capitulated [73] Peace on Earth Flame. "But, of course, if I'm abso- lutely 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 pre- cipitously, "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 anj r way " 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 [74] Good Will to Dogs property involved," she confided quite impulsively. "Uncle Wally's making a new wiD. There's a corn-barn and a private chapel and a collection of Chi- nese lanterns and a piebald pony prin- cipally 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, Tin hoping for the piebald pony." "Yes, but this partyf prodded the Lay Reader. "Oh, yes, the party " quickened Flame. "Why have it in a deserted houser questioned the Lay Reader with some Even with her eyes closely bandaged could see perfectly dearly that [75] Peace on Earth the Lay Reader was really quite trou- bled. "Oh, but you see it isn't exactly a de- serted 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 to- wards the parlor door. "There is cer- tainly 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 per- son strangling." "Strangling?" giggled Flame. "Oh, [76] Good Will to Dogs 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 r "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 biter* "Only if you don't trust them," con- fided 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 [77] Peace on Earth 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," depre- cated the Lay Reader. "That's differ- ent! 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 [78] Good Will to Dogs 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 Uke 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 f* 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 T "Why, of course 111 behave like your partyP' laughed the Lay Reader. "There i* a problem," admitted Flame. "Five problems, to be perfectly accurate. Four dogs, and a cat in the wood- shed." Peace on Earth "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 [80] Good Will to Dogs 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. [81] Peace on Earth Now the Captain of a ship feels genu- inely 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 what- soever 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 prob- ably, to be torn by Hindoo lions, de- voured 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 [82] Good Will to Dogs the thrifly fingers of a lovely young girl, this distaste did not altogether leave him. "This this mush that you speak of T he questioned quite abruptly. "With the dogs as as nervous as you say, so un- fortunately 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 [83] Peace on Earth 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 hold- ing tight to his hand. "Oh, I say, Miss Flame," kindled the entranced Lay Reader, "it's you that look the j oiliest! 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. [84] Good Will to Dogs "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 gram- matical 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 Snortr the Red Setter sucked at the crack in the door. "Woof! Woof! Woofr roared the big Wolf Hound. [85] Peace on Earth "Slam! Bang! Slash!" slapped the Dalmatian's crisp weight. "Yi! Yi! Yi!" sang the Bull Dog. "Hush! Hmh, 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 [86] Good Will to Dogs and passed. Guzzlingly from four sepa- rate 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 quick- ened. 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 o good-looking! Even Mother thinks you're o 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 [87] Peace on Earth 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 mean- ing something entirely different by it. Why, when Mother says with her mouth all pursed up, 'I have every reason to be- lieve 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. [88] Good Will to Dogs 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," [89] Peace on Earth 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 I 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. . , fe Oh, I suppose dictionaries would Good Will to Dogs 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 oppo- site me!" she ordered. For sheer hilar- ious 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 [91] Peace on Earth 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 with- out avail, she searched through all the drawers and cupboards of the Rattle- Pane kitchen. A single alternative oc- curred to her. "You'll have to go over to my house and get them, Mr. Lo- rello!" 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. 192] Good Will to Dogs 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 [98] Peace on Earth 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! Ber- trand!" 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 hu- [94] Good Will to Dogs 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 "bumpiest box" which had so excited her emotions at home in an earlier hour of the day. Cracklingly under her eager fingers the chimsy cover slid off, exposing once more to her enrap- tured 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 tight- ened. [95] Peace on Earth "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! Some- thing 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 [96] Good Will to Dogs 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. [97] Peace on Earth For the Wolf Hound Flame chose a Giraffe's head. Certain anatomical similarities seemed to make the choice wise. With a long vividly striped stock- inet 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 ma- jestically 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, arro- gantly beaked, gorgeously variegated, altogether querulous. [98] Good Will to Dogs For Lopsy, the crafty Setter, she se- lected a White Rabbit's artless, pink- eared visage. Yet out of the whole box of masks it had been the Bengal Tiger's fiercely be- whiskered 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 irrele- vantly. Cocking her own head towards the wood-shed Flame could not be per- fectly sure whether she heard a twinge of cat or a twinge of conscience. The un- flinching 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 [99] Peace on Earth sure I saw a black plush bag in the parlor. ... If the cat could be put in something like a black plush bag, something per- fectly 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 accom- plished. Its lovely sinuous "figure" re- duced 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 [100] Good Will to Dogs acquaintance had ever been forced to con- template. 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 Par- rot's hooked nose slanted slightly to one side. "Oh, I wish Bertrand would come!" fretted Flame. "Maybe this time he'll [101] Peace on Earth notice my 'Christmas Crossing' sign!" she chuckled with sudden triumph. "Talk ahout surprises!" Very diplomatically as she spoke she broke another doughnut in two and drew all the dogs' attention to herself. Almost hysterical with amuse- ment 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 sud- denly. 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 un- [102] Good Will to Dogs familiar domicile, stumbled upon a scene that might have shaken the reason of a less sober young man. Startled first by the unwonted illumi- nation 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 grop- ing through the dingy hall he first beheld the gallows-like structure reared in the kitdien 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 Cross- [108] Peace on Earth 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. 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 seeoi cobwebs flajp- ping grayly across the chimney-breast loomed now the gay worsted recommen- dation that dogs specially, should be con- sidered in the Christmas Season. Throw- ing all caution aside he passed the buffet and plunged into the kitchen. "Oh, do hurry!" cried an eager young Good Will to Dogs 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 abso- lutely 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 cush- ions! ... A Parrot with a twitching black and white short-haired tail! . . . [105] Peace on Earth 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 wait- ing," 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 enchant- ment, the Canary leaped upward and [106] Good Will to Dogs grabbed the Bengal Tiger by bis muslin nose, tbe 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 im- pulsively on his left shoulder! For a moment only, in comparative quiet, the Concerned struggled with the Concerned. Then true to all Dog Psy- chology, absolutely indisputable, abso- lutely 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 stifl towering blandly in the air, burst through his own neck with a most curious anatomical effect, Peace on Earth locked his teeth in the Parrot's gay throat and rolled with him under the table in mortal comhat! 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 suc- ceeded at last in hatching one front paw and one hind paw into action. Wallow- ing, 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 ! [108] Good Will to Dogs 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! Some- body stop itr It was not until the Black Plush Bag at bay had ripped a red streak down Mi-s Flora's avid nose that the Stranger rose to interfere. Very definitely then, with quick deeds, incisive words, he separated the immMJi. ate combatants, and ordered the other dogs into submission. "Here you, Demon Direful F' he ad- [109] Peace on Earth dressed the white Wolf Hound. "Drop that, Orion!" he shouted to the Irish Set- ter. "Cut it out, John!" he thundered at the Coach Dog. "Their names are 'Beautiful-Lovely'!" cried Flame. "And 'Lopsy!' and 'Blun- der-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. . . . May- be she thought his mouth scornful, his narrowing eyes . . . ? Goodness knows what she thought of his suddenly narrow- ing eyes! In an instant she had jumped from her retreat to the floor. [1101 Good Will to Dogs "Who are you, anyway V she de- manded. "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 per- fectly palpably Flame reached back to the arm of the big c?rved chair for sup- port. "Why why, but Mr. Delcote is an old man," she gasped. "I'm almost sure he's an old man." [in] Peace on Earth 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 [112] Good Will to Dogs and Mother and Father will be crazy I . . . 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 dis- heveled 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 out- raged form, and brought her back growl- [118] Peace on Earth ing and bristling to perch on one arm of the high-backed chair. "Th ere!" said Flame. Glancing up from this innocent tri- umph, 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 as- tonish me. For whom, then? Some incredible wight who, worse than late isn't going to show up at all? ... [114] Good Will to Dogs Heaven sent, I consider myself. . . . How else could so little a girl have man- aged 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!" [115] Peace on Earth "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 every- thing 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 par- lor in no time at all!" "W we?" stammered Delcote. Good Will to Dogs "M Mother," said Flame. It's a long time since any dogs lived in the Rattle-Pane House." "Rattle-Brain house?" hridled Delcote. "Rattle-Pan^ House," corrected Flame. A little bit worriedly Delcote returned to his seat. "I shall have to rend the turkey, in- stead 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' P "This 'guest* then," frowned Delcote. "Was he . . . ?" "Oh, you mean . . . Bertrand?" [117] Peace on Earth flushed Flame. "Oh, truly, I didn't in- vite 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 counte- nance?" "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' [118] Good Will to Dogs 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 [119] Peace on Earth the House. "It's all over now. But the people at the railroad station were cer- tainly 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 pris- oner 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. [120] Good Will to Dogs "Yes, tbe regular constable was off Christmasing somewhere it seems, so he put a substitute on his job, a stranger from somewhere. Some substitute that! Xo mulling over hot toddies on Christmas night for him! He ABO the marauder crawling in through the Kectory window! He scrsc 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 surer 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 un- accountable reason. "To be perfectly accurate," he explained conscientiously, lie was caught with a pair of of " Delicately he speh out the word. "With a pair of c-o-r-s-e-t-s rolled up in his hand. But inside the rofl ft seemed there [121] Peace on Earth was a solid silver very elaborate carving set which the Parish had recently pres- ented. 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. Con- sternation 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. [122] Good Will to Dogs "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 [123] Peace on Earth 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 cer- tainly 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 obli- gations and complications " "Pleasant . . . gathering of neigh- bors?" questioned Mrs. Nourice with some emotion. [124] Good Will to Dogs "Oh, I forgot," deprecated the Master of the House with real concern. "Your Christmas season is not, of course, as in- herently 'pleasant' as one might wish. . . . I was told at the railroad station how you and Mr. Xourice had heen called away hy the illness of a relative." "We were called away," confided Mrs. Noun-ice with increasing asperity, "called away at considerable inconvenience hy a very sick relative to receive the pres- ent of a Piebald pony." "Oh, goody!" quickened Flame and col- lapsed 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 [125] Peace on Earth 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 unpleas- ant snarling expression. If this expres- sion 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 re- [126] Good Will to Dogs lease 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 n "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 Tie or she' but 'ft', if only ft' would." Something in the stricken expression of her daughter's face brought a sudden nicker of suspicion to the Mother's eyes. "You don't know anything about this, do you, Flamer she demanded, "Is it [127] Peace on Earth 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 it- self, 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 unaccount- able 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 [128] Good Will to Dogs back to her Mother. There was a smile on her face, but even the smile was the smile of a dreaming person. "NoMother," 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." tf 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 [129] Peace on Earth 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 de- manded. "N not technically," admitted the young man. For an instant a perfectly tense silence reigned. Then from under a shadowy [130] Good Will to Dogs basket the Cat crept out, shining, sinu- ous, 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 I" 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 [131] Peace on Earth 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 explana- tions 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. Ber- trand," 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 [132] Good Will to Dogs 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 sil- [133] Peace on Earth houetted darkly with hers in the open window against the eternal mystery and majesty of a Christmas night. "And then the snow came!" END [134] UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. '^271988 NON-RENEWABLE JUN 681991 HUE 2 WKS FROM DATE| RECEIVED JL - REC'D LD-URl FEB071QI Form L9-Series 4939