* * *
"And a cat in the wood-shed?" echoed the Lay Reader quite idiotically.
* * *
"The table is set," affirmed Flame. "The places, all ready!--But I don't know how to get the dogs into their chairs!--They run around so! They yelp! They jump!--They haven't had a mouthful to eat, you see, since last night, this time!--And when they once see the turkey I'm--I'm afraid they'll stampede it."
* * *
"Turkey?" quizzed the Lay Reader who had dined that day on corned beef.
* * *
"Oh, of course, mush was what they were intended to have," admitted Flame. "Piles and piles of mush! Extra piles and piles of mush I should judge because it was Christmas Day!... But don't you think mush does seem a bit dull?" she questioned appealingly. "For Christmas Day? Oh, I did think a turkey would taste so good!"
* * *
"It certainly would," conceded the Lay Reader.
* * *
"So if you'd help me--" wheedled Flame, "it would be well-worth staying blindfolded for.... For, of course, I shall have to stay blindfolded. But I can see a little of the floor," she admitted, "though I couldn't of course break my promise to my Mother by seeing you."
* * *
"No, certainly not," admitted the Lay Reader.
* * *
"Otherwise--" murmured Flame with a faint gesture towards the door.
* * *
"I will help you," said the Lay Reader.
* * *
"Where is your hand?" fumbled Flame.
* * *
"_Here_!" attested the Lay Reader.
* * *
"Lead us to the dogs!" commanded Flame.
* * *
Now the Captain of a ship feels genuinely obligated, it would seem, to go down with his ship if tragic circumstances so insist. But he never,--so far as I've ever heard, felt the slightest obligation whatsoever to go down with another captain's ship,--to be martyred in short for any job not distinctly his own. So Bertrand Lorello,--who for the cause he served, wouldn't have hesitated an instant probably, to be torn by Hindoo lions,--devoured by South Sea cannibals,--fallen upon by a chapel spire,--trampled to death even at a church rummage sale,--saw no conceivable reason at the moment for being eaten by dogs at a purely social function.
* * *
Even groping through a balsam-scented darkness with one hand clasping the thrilly fingers of a lovely young girl, this distaste did not altogether leave him.
* * *
"This--this mush that you speak of?" he questioned quite abruptly. "With the dogs as--as nervous as you say,--so unfortunately liable to stampede? Don't you think that perhaps a little mush served first,--a good deal of mush I would say, served first,--might act as a--as a sort of anesthetic?... Somewhere in the past I am almost sure I have read that mush in sufficient quantities, you understand, is really quite a--quite an anesthetic."
* * *
Very palpably in the darkness he heard a single throaty swallow.
* * *
"Lead us to the--mush," said Flame.
* * *
In another instant the door-knob turned in his hand, and the cheerful kitchen lamp-light,--glitter of tinsel,--flare of red ribbons,--savor of foods, smote sharply on him.
* * *
"Oh, I say, how _jolly_!" cried the Lay Reader.
* * *
"Don't let me bump into anything!" begged the blindfolded Flame, still holding tight to his hand.
* * *
"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," kindled the entranced Lay Reader, "it's _you_ that look the jolliest! All in white that way! I've never seen you wear _that_ to church, have I?"
* * *
"This is a pinafore," confided Flame coolly. "A bungalow apron, the fashion papers call it.... No, you've never seen me wear--this to church."
* * *
"O--h," said the Lay Reader.
* * *
"Get the mush," said Flame.
* * *
"The what?" asked the Lay Reader.
* * *
"It's there on the table by the window," gestured Flame. "Please set all four dishes on the floor,--each dish, of course, in a separate corner," ordered Flame. "There is a reason.... And then open the parlor door."
* * *
"Open the parlor door?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was no mere grammatical form of speech but a real query in the Lay Reader's mind.
* * *
"Well, maybe I'd better," conceded Flame. "Lead me to it."
* * *
Roused into frenzy by the sound of a stranger's step, a stranger's voice, the four dogs fumed and seethed on the other side of the panel.
* * *
"Sniff--Sniff--_Snort_!" the Red Setter sucked at the crack in the door.
* * *
"Woof! Woof! _Woof_!" roared the big Wolf Hound.
* * *
"Slam! Bang! Slash!" slapped the Dalmatian's crisp weight.
* * *
"Yi! Yi! Yi!" sang the Bull Dog.
* * *
"Hush! _Hush_, Dogs!" implored Flame. "This is Father's Lay Reader!"
* * *
"Your--Lay Reader!" contradicted the young man gallantly. It _was_ pretty gallant of him, wasn't it? Considering everything?
* * *
In another instant four _shapes_ with teeth in them came hurtling through!
* * *
If Flame had never in her life admired the Lay Reader she certainly would have admired him now for the sheer cold-blooded foresight which had presaged the inevitable reaction of the dogs upon the mush and the mush upon the dogs. With a single sniff at his heels, a prod of paws in his stomach, the onslaught swerved--and passed. Guzzlingly from four separate corners of the room issued sounds of joy and fulfillment.
* * *
With an impulse quite surprising even to herself Flame thrust both hands into the Lay Reader's clasp.
* * *
"You _are_ nice, aren't you?" she quickened. In an instant of weakness one hand crept up to the blinding bandage, and recovered its honor as instantly. "Oh, I do wish I _could_ see you," sighed Flame. "You're so good-looking! Even Mother thinks you're _so_ good-looking!... Though she does get awfully worked up, of course, about your 'amorous eyes'!"
* * *
"Does your Mother think I've got ... 'amorous eyes'?" asked the Lay Reader a bit tersely. Behind his spectacles as he spoke the orbs in question softened and glowed like some rare exotic bloom under glass. "Does your Mother ... think I've got amorous eyes?"
* * *
"Oh, yes!" said Flame.
* * *
"And your Father?" drawled the Lay Reader.
* * *
"Why, Father says _of course_ you've got 'amorous eyes'!" confided Flame with the faintest possible tinge of surprise at even being asked such a question. "That's the funny thing about Mother and Father," chuckled Flame. "They're always saying the same thing and meaning something entirely different by it. Why, when Mother says with her mouth all pursed up, 'I have every reason to believe that Mr. Lorello is engaged to the daughter of the Rector in his former Parish,' Father just puts back his head and howls, and says, 'Why, _of course_, Mr. Lorello is engaged to the daughter of the Rector in his former Parish! All Lay Readers...."
* * *
In the sudden hush that ensued a faint sense of uneasiness flickered through Flame's shoulders.
* * *
"Is it you that have hushed? Or the dogs?" she asked.
* * *
"The dogs," said the Lay Reader.
* * *
Very cautiously, absolutely honorably, Flame turned her back to the Lay Reader, and lifted the bandage just far enough to prove the Lay Reader's assertion.
* * *
Bulging with mush the four dogs lay at rest on rounding sides with limp legs straggling, or crouched like lions' heads on paws, with limpid eyes blinking above yawny mouths.
* * *
"O--h," crooned Flame. "How sweet! Only, o
f course, with what's to follow," she regretted thriftily, "it's an awful waste of mush.... Excelsior warmed in the oven would have served just as well."
* * *
At the threat of a shadow across her eyeball she jerked the bandage back into place.
* * *
"Now, Mr. Lorello," she suggested blithely, "if you'll get the Bibles...."
* * *
"Bibles?" stiffened the Lay Reader. "Bibles? Why, really, Miss Flame, I couldn't countenance any sort of mock service! Even just for--for quaintness,--even for Christmas quaintness!"
* * *
"Mock service?" puzzled Flame. "Bibles?... Oh, I don't want you to preach out of 'em," she hastened perfectly amiably to explain. "All I want them for is to plump-up the chairs.... The seats you see are too low for the dogs.... Oh, I suppose dictionaries would do," she compromised reluctantly. "Only dictionaries are always so scarce."
* * *
Obediently the Lay Reader raked the parlor book-cases for "plump-upable" books. With real dexterity he built Chemistries on Sermons and Ancient Poems on Cook Books till the desired heights were reached.
* * *
For a single minute more Flame took another peep at the table.
* * *
"Set a chair for yourself directly opposite me!" she ordered. For sheer hilarious satisfaction her feet began to dance and her hands to clap. "And whenever I really feel obliged to look," she sparkled, "you'll just have to leave the table, that's all!... And now...?" Appraisingly her muffled eye swept the shining vista. "Perfect!" she triumphed. "Perfect!" Then quite abruptly the eager mouth wilted. "Why ... Why I've forgotten the carving knife and fork!" she cried out in real distress. "Oh, how stupid of me!" Arduously, but without avail, she searched through all the drawers and cupboards of the Rattle-Pane kitchen. A single alternative occurred to her. "You'll have to go over to my house and get them,--Mr. Lorello!" she said. "Were you ever in my kitchen? Or my pantry?"
* * *
"No," admitted the Lay Reader.
* * *
"Well, you'll have to climb in through the window--someway," worried Flame. "I've mislaid my key somewhere here among all these dishes and boxes. And the pantry," she explained very explicitly, "is the third door on the right as you enter.... You'll see a chest of drawers. Open the second of 'em.... Or maybe you'd better look through all of them.... Only please ... please hurry!" Imploringly the little head lifted.
* * *
"If I hurry enough," said the Lay Reader quite impulsively, "may I have a kiss when I get back?"
* * *
"A kiss?" hooted Flame. In the curve of her cheek a dimple opened suddenly. "Well ... maybe," said Flame.
* * *
As though the word were wings the Lay Reader snatched his hat and sped out into the night.
* * *
It was astonishing how all the warm housey air seemed to rush out with him, and all the shivery frost rush back.
* * *
A little bit listlessly Flame dragged down the bandage from her eyes.
* * *
"It must be the creaks on the stairs that make it so awfully lonely all of a sudden," argued Flame. "It must be because the dogs snore so.... No mere man could make it so empty." With a precipitous nudge of the memory she dashed to the door and helloed to the fast retreating figure. "Oh, Bertrand! Bertrand!" she called, "I got sort of mixed up. It's the second door on the left! And if you don't find 'em there you'd better go up in Mother's room and turn out the silver chest! _Hurry_!"
* * *
Rallying back to the bright Christmas kitchen for the real business at hand, an accusing blush rose to the young spot where the dimple had been.
* * *
"Oh, Shucks!" parried Flame. "I kissed a Bishop before I was five!--What's a Lay Reader?" As one humanely willing to condone the future as well as the past she rolled up her white sleeves without further introspection, and dragged out from the protecting shadow of the sink the "humpiest box" which had so excited her emotions at home in an earlier hour of the day. Cracklingly under her eager fingers the clumsy cover slid off, exposing once more to her enraptured gaze the gay-colored muslin layer of animal masks leering fatuously up at her.
* * *
Only with her hand across her mouth did she keep from crying out. Very swiftly her glance traveled from the grinning muslin faces before her to the solemn fur faces on the other side of the room. The hand across her mouth tightened.
* * *
"Why, it's something like Creation," she giggled. "This having to decide which face to give to which animal!"
* * *
As expeditiously as possible she made her selection.
* * *
"Poor Miss Flora must be so tired of being so plain," she thought. "I'll give her the first choice of everything! Something really lovely! It can't help resting her!"
* * *
With this kind idea in mind she selected for Miss Flora a canary's face.--Softly yellow! Bland as treacle! Its swelling, tender muslin throat fairly reeking with the suggestion of innocent song! No one gazing once upon such ornithological purity would ever speak a harsh word again, even to a sparrow!
* * *
Nudging Miss Flora cautiously from her sonorous nap, Flame beguiled her with half a doughnut to her appointed chair, boosted her still cautiously to her pinnacle of books, and with various swift adjustments of fasteners, knotting of tie-strings,--an extra breathing hole jabbed through the beak, slipped the canary's beautiful blond countenance over Miss Flora's frankly grizzled mug.
* * *
For a single terrifying instant Miss Flora's crinkled sides tightened,--a snarl like ripped silk slipped through her straining lungs. Then once convinced that the mask was not a gas-box she accepted the liberty with reasonable _sang-froid_ and sat blinking beadily out through the canary's yellow-rimmed eye-sockets with frank curiosity towards such proceedings as were about to follow. It was easy to see she was accustomed to sitting in chairs.
* * *
For the Wolf Hound Flame chose a Giraffe's head. Certain anatomical similarities seemed to make the choice wise. With a long vividly striped stockinet neck wrinkling like a mousquetaire glove, the neat small head that so closely fitted his own neat small head, the tweaked, interrogative ears,--Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf Hound, reared up majestically in his own chair. He also, once convinced that the mask was not a gas-box, resigned himself to the inevitable, and corporeally independent of such vain props as Chemistries or Sermons, lolled his fine height against the mahogany chair-back.
* * *
To Blunder-Blot, the trim Dalmatian, Flame assigned the Parrot's head, arrogantly beaked, gorgeously variegated, altogether querulous.
* * *
For Lopsy, the crafty Setter, she selected a White Rabbit's artless, pink-eared visage.
* * *
Yet out of the whole box of masks it had been the Bengal Tiger's fiercely bewhiskered visage that had fascinated Flame the most. Regretfully from its more or less nondescript companions, she picked up the Bengal Tiger now and pulled at its real, bristle-whiskers. In one of the chairs a dog stirred quite irrelevantly. Cocking her own head towards the wood-shed Flame could not be perfectly sure whether she heard a twinge of cat or a twinge of conscience. The unflinching glare of the Bengal Tiger only served to increase her self-reproach.
* * *
"After all," reasoned Flame, "it would be easy enough to set another place! And pile a few extra books!... I'm almost sure I saw a black plush bag in the parlor.... If the cat could be put in something like a black plush bag,--something perfectly enveloping like that? So that not a single line of its--its figure could be observed?... And it had a new head given it? A perfectly sufficient head--like a Bengal Tiger?--I see no reason why--"
* * *
In five minutes the deed was accomplished. Its lovely sinuous "figure" reduced to the stolid contour of a black plush work-bag, its small uneasy head thrust into the roomy muslin cranium of the
Bengal Tiger, the astonished Cat found herself slumping soggily on a great teetering pile of books, staring down as best she might through the Bengal Tiger's ear at the weirdest assemblage of animals which any domestic cat of her acquaintance had ever been forced to contemplate.
The Big Book of Christmas Page 148