oes
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!"

Like a blast from the Arctic the Christmas twilight swept in on her.
It crisped her cheeks,--crinkled her hair! Turned her spine to a wisp
of tinsel! All outdoors seemed suddenly creaking with frost! All
indoors, with _unknownness_!

"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.

"Oh, what a--glorious lark!" quivered Flame. "What a--a _lonely_
glorious lark!"

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 rolli