ng 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 d