Read Ebook: Peace on Earth Good-will to Dogs by Abbott Eleanor Hallowell

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Ebook has 308 lines and 13216 words, and 7 pages

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.

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.

Directly opposite and conspicuously placed above the rusty stove-pipe stretched the Parish's Gift Motto--duly re-adjusted.

"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!"

"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.

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!

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!

"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.

"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!"

"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.

"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.

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