"It certainly would," conceded the Lay Reader.
"So if you'd help me-" wheedled Flame, "it would be well-worth staying blindfolded for.... For, of course, I shall have to stay blindfolded. But I can see a little of the floor," she admitted, "though I couldn't of course break my promise to my Mother by seeing you."
"No, certainly not," admitted the Lay Reader.
"Otherwise-" murmured Flame with a faint gesture towards the door.
"I will help you," said the Lay Reader.
"Where is your hand?" fumbled Flame.
"Here!" attested the Lay Reader.
"Lead us to the dogs!" commanded Flame.
Now the Captain of a ship feels genuinely obligated, it would seem, to go down with his ship if tragic circumstances so insist. But he never,-so far as I've ever heard, felt the slightest obligation whatsoever to go down with another captain's ship,-to be martyred in short for any job not distinctly his own. So Bertrand Lorello,-who for the cause he served, wouldn't have hesitated an instant probably, to be torn by Hindoo lions,-devoured by South Sea cannibals,-fallen upon by a chapel spire,-trampled to death even at a church rummage sale,-saw no conceivable reason at the moment for being eaten by dogs at a purely social function.
Even groping through a balsam-scented darkness with one hand clasping the thrilly fingers of a lovely young girl, this distaste did not altogether leave him.
"This-this mush that you speak of?" he questioned quite abruptly. "With the dogs as-as nervous as you say,-so unfortunately liable to stampede? Don't you think that perhaps a little mush served first,-a good deal of mush I would say, served first,-might act as a-as a sort of anesthetic?... Somewhere in the past I am almost sure I have read that mush in sufficient quantities, you understand, is really quite a-quite an anesthetic."
Very palpably in the darkness he heard a single throaty swallow.
"Lead us to the-mush," said Flame.
In another instant the door-knob turned in his hand, and the cheerful kitchen lamp-light,-glitter of tinsel,-flare of red ribbons,-savor of foods, smote sharply on him.
"Oh, I say, how jolly!" cried the Lay Reader.
"Don't let me bump into anything!" begged the blindfolded Flame, still holding tight to his hand.
"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," kindled the entranced Lay Reader, "it's you that look the jolliest! All in white that way! I've never seen you wear that to church, have I?"
"This is a pinafore," confided Flame coolly. "A bungalow apron, the fashion papers call it.... No, you've never seen me wear-this to church."
"O-h," said the Lay Reader.
"Get the mush," said Flame.
"The what?" asked the Lay Reader.
"It's there on the table by the window," gestured Flame. "Please set all four dishes on the floor,-each dish, of course, in a separate corner," ordered Flame. "There is a reason.... And then open the parlor door."
"Open the parlor door?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was no mere grammatical form of speech but a real query in the Lay Reader's mind.
"Well, maybe I'd better," conceded Flame. "Lead me to it."
Roused into frenzy by the sound of a stranger's step, a stranger's voice, the four dogs fumed and seethed on the other side of the panel.
"Sniff-Sniff-Snort!" the Red Setter sucked at the crack in the door.
"Woof! Woof! Woof!" roared the big Wolf Hound.
"Slam! Bang! Slash!" slapped the Dalmatian's crisp weight.
"Yi! Yi! Yi!" sang the Bull Dog.
"Hush! Hush, Dogs!" implored Flame. "This is Father's Lay Reader!"
"Your-Lay Reader!" contradicted the young man gallantly. It was pretty gallant of him, wasn't it? Considering everything?
In another instant four shapes with teeth in them came hurtling through!
If Flame had never in her life admired the Lay Reader she certainly would have admired him now for the sheer cold-blooded foresight which had presaged the inevitable reaction of the dogs upon the mush and the mush upon the dogs. With a single sniff at his heels, a prod of paws in his stomach, the onslaught swerved-and passed. Guzzlingly from four separate corners of the room issued sounds of joy and fulfillment.
With an impulse quite surprising even to herself Flame thrust both hands into the Lay Reader's clasp.
"You are nice, aren't you?" she quickened. In an instant of weakness one hand crept up to the blinding bandage, and recovered its honor as instantly. "Oh, I do wish I could see you," sighed Flame. "You're so good-looking! Even Mother thinks you're so good-looking!... Though she does get awfully worked up, of course, about your 'amorous eyes'!"
"Does your Mother think I've got ... 'amorous eyes'?" asked the Lay Reader a bit tersely. Behind his spectacles as he spoke the orbs in question softened and glowed like some rare exotic bloom under glass. "Does your Mother ... think I've got amorous eyes?"
"Oh, yes!" said Flame.
"And your Father?" drawled the Lay Reader.
"Why, Father says of course you've got 'amorous eyes'!" confided Flame with the faintest possible tinge of surprise at even being asked such a question. "That's the funny thing about Mother and Father," chuckled Flame. "They're always saying the same thing and meaning something entirely different by it. Why, when Mother says with her mouth all pursed up, 'I have every reason to believe that Mr. Lorello is engaged to the daughter of the Rector in his former Parish,' Father just puts back his head and howls, and says, 'Why, of course, Mr. Lorello is engaged to the daughter of the Rector in his former Parish! All Lay Readers...."
In the sudden hush that ensued a faint sense of uneasiness flickered through Flame's shoulders.
"Is it you that have hushed? Or the dogs?" she asked.
"The dogs," said the Lay Reader.
Very cautiously, absolutely honorably, Flame turned her back to the Lay Reader, and lifted the bandage just far enough to prove the Lay Reader's assertion.
Bulging with mush the four dogs lay at rest on rounding sides with limp legs straggling, or crouched like lions' heads on paws, with limpid eyes blinking above yawny mouths.
"O-h," crooned Flame. "How sweet! Only, of course, with what's to follow," she regretted thriftily, "it's an awful waste of mush.... Excelsior warmed in the oven would have served just as well."
At the threat of a shadow across her eyeball she jerked the bandage back into place.
"Now, Mr. Lorello," she suggested blithely, "if you'll get the Bibles...."
"Bibles?" stiffened the Lay Reader. "Bibles? Why, really, Miss Flame, I couldn't countenance any sort of mock service! Even just for-for quaintness,-even for Christmas quaintness!"
"Mock service?" puzzled Flame. "Bibles?... Oh, I don't want you to preach out of 'em," she hastened perfectly amiably to explain. "All I want them for is to plump-up the chairs.... The seats you see are too low for the dogs.... Oh, I suppose dictionaries would do," she compromised reluctantly. "Only dictionaries are always so scarce."
Obediently the Lay Reader raked the parlor book-cases for "plump-upable" books. With real dexterity he built Chemistries on Sermons and Ancient Poems on Cook Books till the desired heights were reached.
For a single minute more Flame took another peep at the table.
"Set a chair for yourself directly opposite me!" she ordered. For sheer hilarious satisfaction her feet began to dance and her hands to clap. "And whenever I really feel obliged to look," she sparkled, "you'll just have to leave the table, that's all!... And now...?" Appraisingly her muffled eye swept the shining vista. "Perfect!" she triumphed. "Perfect!" Then quite abruptly the eager mouth wilted. "Why ... Why I've forgotten the carving knife and fork!" she cried out in real distress. "Oh, how stupid of me!" Arduously, but without avail, she searched through all the drawers and cupboards of the Rattle-Pane kitchen. A single alternative occurred to her. "You'll have to go over to my house and get them,-Mr. Lorello!" she said. "Were you ever in my kitchen? Or my pantry?"