ad-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!"

"Not to see _me_?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was astonishing how
almost instantaneously a man as purely theoretical as the Lay Reader
was supposed to be, thought of a perfectly practical solution to the
difficulty. "Why--why we might tie my big handkerchief across your
eyes," he suggested. "Just till we get this mystery straightened
out.--Surely there is nothing more or less than just plain
righteousness in--that!"

"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.

"Well, you see," she began quite precipitously, "I _did_ think it
would be such fun to have a party!--A party all my own, I mean!--A
party just exactly as I wanted it! No Parish in it at all! Or good
works! Or anything! Just _fun_!--And as long as Mother and Father had
to go away anyway--" Even though the blinding bandage the young eyes
seemed to lift in a half wistful sort of appeal. "You see there's some
sort of property involved," she confided quite impulsively. "Uncle
Wally's making a new will. There's a corn-barn and a private chapel
and a collection of Chinese lanterns and a piebald pony principally
under dispute.--Mother, of course thinks we ought to have the
corn-barn. But Father can't decide between the Chinese lanterns and
the private chapel.--Personally," she sighed, "I'm hoping for the
piebald pony."

"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.

"I don't know--exactly,