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 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 particularly 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 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 they?” 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 confided. “Mother thinks they’re not—Oh, of course, I realize that four dogs is a—a good many,” she hastened diplomatically 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 up with a certain plaintive intentness.
“All dogs is too many,” he affirmed.
“Come Christmas time I wishes I was dead.”
“Wish you were dead...at Christmas Time?” cried Flame. Acute shock was in her protest.
“It’s the feedin’,” sighed the old Butler. “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 anything,” he argued. “Not he! Not Christmas 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. Delcote?” quickened Flame. “Mr. Delcote?” (Now at last was the mysterious 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, Barret’, he says, ‘why innocent 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 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 absent 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 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...?” Appealingly her eager eyes searched the old Butler’s inscrutable face.
“Yes’m,” repeated the old Butler 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 suitcases, 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.
“Not such a bad one, either,” explained her Mother. “But of course we’ll have to go! The very first thing in the morning! 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! We’ll 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 it.” 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 suitcase she began very palpably to pant again. “Yes! Every detail is all 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 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 delightful 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 offer of 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 packing 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 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 ad
monished still breathlessly, “I think you’d better be careful to wear one of your rather longish 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 such 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.
“...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 once!”
“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 precipitously smitten with shyness they sat for a moment staring blankly around the 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 a very black frown. “Now take tomorrow, 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 relatives can do is to take extra precautions at holiday time.... 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 disappointing,” he wilted again.
“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 anyone 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 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 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 sank back into his cushions. “N-o, no one, 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...! No heart aches involved, no hurt feelings, no disappointments for anybody! Nobody left out! Nobody dragged in! Why Father-Funny,” she cried. “It’s an experience 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 someone who once spent Christmas just exactly the way she wanted to’!” To a limpness almost 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 ‘holler’ day and 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! Something 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 Merry Aunt Minna’ any more than you could wish ’em a ‘Merry Good Friday’!” 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 persuade Mother that....”
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 better but he thinks he’s worse! And they want us to come at once! It’s something about a new will! The Lawyer telephoned! He advises us to come at once! They’ve sent an automobile for us! It will be here any minute...! But whatever in the world shall we do about Flame?” she cried distractedly. “You know how Uncle Wally feels about having young people in the house! And she can’t possibly go to Aunt Minna’s till tomorrow! And....”
“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.”
“Well, how do you feel about him yourself?” veered her Father quite irrelevantly.
“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 myself!” said Flame. “Oh, of course, I know perfectly well,” she agreed, “that I could go to a dozen places in the Parish and be cry-babied over for my presumable 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 rallied 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 lifetime! Even Father sees that it’s the chance of a lifetime!”
“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’m—”
“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 himself very characteristically.
“No young girl has a level heart,” asserted 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 forgot to ask. Just what kind of a Christmas 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 rolled them down again before she answered.
“I—I want to make a Surprise for Miss Flora,” she confided.
“Honk-honk!” urged the automobile.
“For Miss Flora?” gasped her Mother.
“Miss Flora?” echoed her Father.
The Christmas Megapack Page 39
