"Wow-Wow-Wow!" caroled Beautiful-Lovely. "Ww-ow-Ww-ow-Ww-Oo-Wwwww!"
As Flame's hands dropped from the piano the unmistakable creak of red wheels sounded on the frozen driveway just outside.
No one but "Bertrand the Lay Reader" drove a buggy with red wheels! To the infinite scandalization of the Parish-no one but "Bertrand the Lay Reader" drove a buggy with red wheels!-Fleet steps sounded suddenly on the path! Startled fists beat furiously on the door!
"What is it? What is it?" shouted a familiar voice. "Whatever in the world is happening? Is it murder? Let me in! Let me in!"
"Sil-ly!" hissed Flame through a crack in the door. "It's nothing but a party! Don't you know a-a party when you hear it?"
For an instant only, blank silence greeted her confidence. Then "Bertrand the Lay Reader" relaxed in an indisputably genuine gasp of astonishment.
"Why! Why, is that you, Miss Flame?" he gasped. "Why, I thought it was a murder! Why-Why, whatever in the world are you doing here?"
"I-I'm having a party," hissed Flame through the key-hole.
"A-a-party?" stammered the Lay Reader. "Open the door!"
"No, I-can't," said Flame.
"Why not?" demanded the Lay Reader.
Helplessly in the darkness of the vestibule Flame looked up,-and down,-and sideways,-but met always in every direction the memory of her promise.
"I-I just can't," she admitted a bit weakly. "It wouldn't be convenient.-I-I've got trouble with my eyes."
"Trouble with your eyes?" questioned the Lay Reader.
"I didn't go away with my Father and Mother," confided Flame.
"No,-so I notice," observed the Lay Reader. "Please open the door!"
"Why?" parried Flame.
"I've been looking for you everywhere," urged the Lay Reader. "At the Senior Warden's! At all the Vestrymen's houses! Even at the Sexton's! I knew you didn't go away! The Garage Man told me there were only two!-I thought surely I'd find you at your own house.-But I only found sled tracks."
"That was me,-I," mumbled Flame.
"And then I heard these awful screams," shuddered the Lay Reader.
"That was a Carol," said Flame.
"A Carol?" scoffed the Lay Reader. "Open the door!"
"Well-just a crack," conceded Flame.
It was astonishing how a man as broad-shouldered as the Lay Reader could pass so easily through a crack.
Conscience-stricken Flame fled before him with her elbow crooked across her forehead.
"Oh, my eyes! My eyes!" she cried.
"Well, really," puzzled the Lay Reader. "Though I claim, of course, to be ordinarily bright-I had never suspected myself of being actually dazzling."
"Oh, you're not bright at all," protested Flame. "It's just my promise.-I promised Mother not to see you!"
"Not to see me?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was astonishing how almost instantaneously a man as purely theoretical as the Lay Reader was supposed to be, thought of a perfectly practical solution to the difficulty. "Why-why we might tie my big handkerchief across your eyes," he suggested. "Just till we get this mystery straightened out.-Surely there is nothing more or less than just plain righteousness in-that!"
"What a splendid idea!" capitulated Flame. "But, of course, if I'm absolutely blindfolded," she wavered for a second only, "you'll have to lead me by the hand."
"I could do that," admitted the Lay Reader.
With the big white handkerchief once tied firmly across her eyes, Flame's last scruple vanished.
"Well, you see," she began quite precipitously, "I did think it would be such fun to have a party!-A party all my own, I mean!-A party just exactly as I wanted it! No Parish in it at all! Or good works! Or anything! Just fun!-And as long as Mother and Father had to go away anyway-" Even though the blinding bandage the young eyes seemed to lift in a half wistful sort of appeal. "You see there's some sort of property involved," she confided quite impulsively. "Uncle Wally's making a new will. There's a corn-barn and a private chapel and a collection of Chinese lanterns and a piebald pony principally under dispute.-Mother, of course thinks we ought to have the corn-barn. But Father can't decide between the Chinese lanterns and the private chapel.-Personally," she sighed, "I'm hoping for the piebald pony."
"Yes, but this-party?" prodded the Lay Reader.
"Oh, yes,-the party-" quickened Flame.
"Why have it in a deserted house?" questioned the Lay Reader with some incisiveness.
Even with her eyes closely bandaged Flame could see perfectly clearly that the Lay Reader was really quite troubled.
"Oh, but you see it isn't exactly a deserted house," she explained.
"Who lives here?" demanded the Lay Reader.
"I don't know-exactly," admitted Flame. "But the Butler is a friend of mine and-"
"The-Butler is a friend of yours?" gasped the Lay Reader. Already, if Flame could only have seen it, his head was cocked with sudden intentness towards the parlor door. "There is certainly something very strange about all this," he whispered a bit hectically. "I could almost have sworn that I heard a faint scuffle,-the horrid sound of a person-strangling."
"Strangling?" giggled Flame. "Oh, that is just the sound of Miss Flora's 'girlish glee'! If she'd only be content to chew the corner of the piano cover! But when she insists on inhaling it, too!"
"Miss Flora?" gasped the Lay Reader. "Is this a Mad House?"
"Miss Flora is a-a dog," confided Flame a bit coolly. "I neglected-it seems-to state that this is a dog-party that I'm having."
"Dogs?" winced the Lay Reader. "Will they bite?"
"Only if you don't trust them," confided Flame.
"But it's so hard to trust a dog that will bite you if you don't trust him," frowned the Lay Reader. "It makes such a sort of a-a vicious circle, as it were."
"Vicious Circe?" mused Flame, a bit absent-mindedly. "No, I don't think it's nice at all to call Miss Flora a 'Vicious Circe.'" It was Flame's turn now to wince back a little. "I-I hate people who hate dogs!" she cried out quite abruptly.
"Oh, I don't hate them," lied the Lay Reader like a gentleman, "it's only that-that-. You see a dog bit me once!" he confided with significant emphasis.
"I-bit a dentist-once," mused Flame without any emphasis at all.
"Oh, but I say, Miss Flame," deprecated the Lay Reader. "That's different! When a dog bites you, you know, there's always more or less question whether he was mad or not."
"There doesn't seem to have been any question at all," mused Flame, "that you were mad! Did you have your head sent off to be investigated or anything?"
"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," implored the Lay Reader, "I tell you I like dogs,-good dogs! I assure you I'm very-oh, very much interested in this dog party of yours! Such a quaint idea! So-so-! If I could be of any possible assistance?" he implored.
"Maybe you could be," relaxed Flame ever so faintly. "But if you're really coming to my party," she stiffened again, "you've got to behave like my party!"
"Why, of course I'll behave like your party!" laughed the Lay Reader.
"There is a problem," admitted Flame. "Five problems, to be perfectly accurate.-Four dogs, and a cat in the wood-shed."
"And a cat in the wood-shed?" echoed the Lay Reader quite idiotically.
"The table is set," affirmed Flame. "The places, all ready!-But I don't know how to get the dogs into their chairs!-They run around so! They yelp! They jump!-They haven't had a mouthful to eat, you see, since last night, this time!-And when they once see the turkey I'm-I'm afraid they'll stampede it."
"Turkey?" quizzed the Lay Reader who had dined that day on corned beef.
"Oh, of course, mush was what they were intended to have," admitted Flame. "Piles and piles of mush! Extra piles and piles of mush I should judge because it was Christmas Day!... But don't you think mush does seem a bit dull?" she questioned appealingly. "For Christmas Day? Oh, I did think a turkey would taste so good!"