Certainly the morning was very full of deeds!
There was, of course, a present from her Mother to be opened,-warm, woolly stockings and things like that. But no one was ever swerved from an original purpose by trying on warm, woolly stockings. And from her Father there was the most absurd little box no bigger than your nose marked, "For a week in New York," and stuffed to the brim with the sweetest bright green dollar bills. But, of course, you couldn't try those on. And half the Parish sent presents. But no Parish ever sent presents that needed to be tried on. No gay, fluffy scarfs,-no lacey, frivolous pettiskirts,-no bright delaying hat-ribbons! Just books,-illustrated poems usually, very wholesome pickles,-and always a huge motto to recommend, "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men."-To "Men"?-Why not to Women?-Why not at least to "Dogs?" questioned Flame quite abruptly.
Taken all in all it was not a Christmas Morning of sentiment but a Christmas morning of works! Kitchen works, mostly! Useful, flavorous adventures with a turkey! A somewhat nervous sally with an apple pie! Intermittently, of course, a few experiments with flour paste! A flaire or two with a paint brush! An errand to the attic! Interminable giggles!
Surely it was four o'clock before she was even ready to start for the Rattle-Pane House. And "starting" is by no means the same as arriving. Dragging a sledful of miscellaneous Christmas goods an eighth of a mile over bare ground is not an easy task. She had to make three tugging trips. And each start was delayed by her big gray pussy cat stealing out to try to follow her. And each arrival complicated by the yelpings and leapings and general cavortings of four dogs who didn't see any reason in the world why they shouldn't escape from their forced imprisonment in the shed-yard and prance home with her. Even with the third start and the third arrival finally accomplished, the crafty cat stood waiting for her on the steps of the Rattle-Pane House,-back arched, fur bristled, spitting like some new kind of weather-cock at the storm in the shed-yard, and had to be thrust quite unceremoniously into a much too small covered basket and lashed down with yards and yards of tinsel that was needed quite definitely for something else.-It isn't just the way of the Transgressor that's hard.-Nobody's way is any too easy!
The door-key, though, was exactly where the old Butler had said it would be,-under the door mat, and the key itself turned astonishingly cordially in the rusty old lock. Never in her whole little life having owned a door-key to her own house it seemed quite an adventure in itself to be walking thus possessively through an unfamiliar hall into an absolutely unknown kitchen and goodness knew what on either side and beyond.
Perfectly simply too as the old Butler had promised, the four dog dishes, heaping to the brim, loomed in prim line upon the kitchen table waiting for distribution.
"U-m-m," sniffed Flame. "Nothing but mush! Mush!-All over the world to-day I suppose-while their masters are feasting at other people's houses on puddings and-and cigarettes! How the poor darlings must suffer! Locked in sheds! Tied in yards! Stuffed down cellar!"
"Me-o-w," twinged a plaintive hint from the hallway just outside.
"Oh, but cats are different," argued Flame. "So soft, so plushy, so spineless! Cats were meant to be stuffed into things."
Without further parleying she doffed her red tam and sweater, donned a huge white all-enveloping pinafore, and started to ameliorate as best she could the Christmas sufferings of the "poor darlings" immediately at hand.
It was at least a yellow kitchen,-or had been once. In all that gray, dank, neglected house, the one suggestion of old sunshine.
"We shall have our dinner here," chuckled Flame. "After the carols-we shall have our dinner here."
Very boisterously in the yard just outside the window the four dogs scuffled and raced for sheer excitement and joy at this most unexpected advent of human companionship. Intermittently from time to time by the aid of old boxes or barrels they clawed their way up to the cobwebby window-sill to peer at the strange proceedings. Intermittently from time to time they fell back into the frozen yard in a chaos of fur and yelps.
By five o'clock certainly the faded yellow kitchen must have looked very strange, even to a dog!
Straight down its dingy, wobbly-floored center stretched a long table cheerfully spread with "the Rev. Mrs. Flamande Nourice's" second best table cloth. Quaint high-backed chairs dragged in from the shadowy parlor circled the table. A pleasant china plate gleamed like a hand-painted moon before each chair. At one end of the table loomed a big brown turkey; at the other, the appropriate vegetables. Pies, cakes, and doughnuts, interspersed themselves between. Green wreaths streaming with scarlet ribbons hung nonchalantly across every chair-top. Tinsel garlands shone on the walls. In the doorway reared a hastily constructed mimicry of a railroad crossing sign.
[Illustration]
Directly opposite and conspicuously placed above the rusty stove-pipe stretched the Parish's Gift Motto-duly re-adjusted.
"Peace on Earth, Good Will to Dogs."
"Fatuously silly," admitted Flame even to herself. "But yet it does add something to the Gayety of Rations!"
Stepping aside for a single thrilling moment to study the full effect of her handiwork, the first psychological puzzle of her life smote sharply across her senses. Namely, that you never really get the whole fun out of anything unless you are absolutely alone.-But the very first instant you find yourself absolutely alone with a Really-Good-Time you begin to twist and turn and hunt about for somebody Very Special to share it with you!
The only "Very Special" person that Flame could think of was "Bertrand the Lay Reader."
All a-blush with the sheer mental surprise of it she fled to the shed door to summon the dogs.
"Maybe even the dogs won't come!" she reasoned hectically. "Maybe nothing will come! Maybe that's always the way things happen when you get your own way about something else!"
Like a blast from the Arctic the Christmas twilight swept in on her. It crisped her cheeks,-crinkled her hair! Turned her spine to a wisp of tinsel! All outdoors seemed suddenly creaking with frost! All indoors, with unknownness!
"Come, Beautiful-Lovely!" she implored. "Come, Lopsy! Miss Flora! Come, Blunder-Blot!'"
But there was really no need of entreaty. A turn of the door-knob would have brought them! Leaping, loping, four abreast, they came plunging like so many North Winds to their party! Streak of Snow,-Glow of Fire,-Frozen Mud-Sun-Spot!-Yelping-mouthed-slapping-tailed! Backs bristling! Legs stiffening! Wolf Hound, Setter, Bull Dog, Dalmatian,-each according to his kind, hurtling, crowding!
"Oh, dear me, dear me," struggled Flame. "Maybe a carol would calm them."
To a certain extent a carol surely did. The hair-cloth parlor of the Rattle-Pane House would have calmed anything. And the mousey smell of the old piano fairly jerked the dogs to its senile old ivory keyboard. Cocking their ears to its quavering treble notes,-snorting their nostrils through its gritty guttural basses, they watched Flame's facile fingers sweep from sound to sound.
"Oh, what a-glorious lark!" quivered Flame. "What a-a lonely glorious lark!"
Timidly at first but with an increasing abandon, half laughter and half tears, the clear young soprano voice took up its playful paraphrase,
"God rest you merrie-animals!
Let nothing you dismay!"
caroled Flame.
"For-"
It was just at this moment that Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf Hound,-muzzled lifted, eyes rolling, jabbed his shrill nose into space and harmony with a carol of his own,-octaves of agony,-Heaven knows what of ecstasy,-that would have hurried an owl to its nest, a ghoul to a moving picture show!