" admitted Flame. "But the Butler is a friend
of mine and--"

"The--Butler is a friend of yours?" gasped the Lay Reader. Already, if
Flame could only have seen it, his head was cocked with sudden
intentness towards the parlor door. "There is certainly something very
strange about all this," he whispered a bit hectically. "I could
almost have sworn that I heard a faint scuffle,--the horrid sound of a
person--strangling."

"Strangling?" giggled Flame. "Oh, that is just the sound of Miss
Flora's 'girlish glee'! If she'd only be content to chew the corner of
the piano cover! But when she insists on inhaling it, too!"

"Miss Flora?" gasped the Lay Reader. "Is this a Mad House?"

"Miss Flora is a--a dog," confided Flame a bit coolly. "I
neglected--it seems--to state that this is a dog-party that I'm
having."

"_Dogs_?" winced the Lay Reader. "Will they bite?"

"Only if you don't trust them," confided Flame.

"But it's so hard to trust a dog that will bite you if you don't trust
him," frowned the Lay Reader. "It makes such a sort of a--a vicious
circle, as it were."

"Vicious Circe?" mused Flame, a bit absent-mindedly. "No, I don't
think it's nice at all to call Miss Flora a 'Vicious Circe.'" It was
Flame's turn now to wince back a little. "I--I hate people who hate
dogs!" she cried out quite abruptly.

"Oh, I don't hate them," lied the Lay Reader like a gentleman, "it's
only that--that--. You see a dog bit me once!" he confided with
significant emphasis.

"I--bit a dentist--once," mused Flame without any emphasis at all.

"Oh, but I say, Miss Flame," deprecated the Lay Reader. "That's
different! When a dog bites you, you know, there's always more or less
question whether he was mad or not."

"There doesn't seem to have been any question at all," mused Flame,
"that _you_ were mad! Did you have _your_ head sent off to be
investigated or anything?"

"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," implored the Lay Reader, "I tell you I _like_
dogs,--good dogs! I assure you I'm very--oh, very much interested in
this dog party of yours! Such a quaint idea! So--so--! If I could be
of any possible assistance?" he implored.

"Maybe you could be," relaxed Flame ever so faintly. "But if you're
really coming to my party," she stiffened again, "you've got to behave
like my party!"

"Why, of course I'll behave like your party!" laughed the Lay Reader.

"There _is_ a problem," admitted Flame. "Five problems, to be
perfectly accurate.--Four d