y, served first,--might act as a--as a
sort of anesthetic?... Somewhere in the past I am almost sure I have
read that mush in sufficient quantities, you understand, is really
quite a--quite an anesthetic."

Very palpably in the darkness he heard a single throaty swallow.

"Lead us to the--mush," said Flame.

In another instant the door-knob turned in his hand, and the cheerful
kitchen lamp-light,--glitter of tinsel,--flare of red ribbons,--savor
of foods, smote sharply on him.

"Oh, I say, how _jolly_!" cried the Lay Reader.

"Don't let me bump into anything!" begged the blindfolded Flame, still
holding tight to his hand.

"Oh, I say, Miss Flame," kindled the entranced Lay Reader, "it's _you_
that look the jolliest! All in white that way! I've never seen you
wear _that_ to church, have I?"

"This is a pinafore," confided Flame coolly. "A bungalow apron, the
fashion papers call it.... No, you've never seen me wear--this to
church."

"O--h," said the Lay Reader.

"Get the mush," said Flame.

"The what?" asked the Lay Reader.

"It's there on the table by the window," gestured Flame. "Please set
all four dishes on the floor,--each dish, of course, in a separate
corner," ordered Flame. "There is a reason.... And then open the
parlor door."

"Open the parlor door?" questioned the Lay Reader. It was no mere
grammatical form of speech but a real query in the Lay Reader's mind.

"Well, maybe I'd better," conceded Flame. "Lead me to it."

Roused into frenzy by the sound of a stranger's step, a stranger's
voice, the four dogs fumed and seethed on the other side of the panel.

"Sniff--Sniff--_Snort_!" the Red Setter sucked at the crack in the
door.

"Woof! Woof! _Woof_!" roared the big Wolf Hound.

"Slam! Bang! Slash!" slapped the Dalmatian's crisp weight.

"Yi! Yi! Yi!" sang the Bull Dog.

"Hush! _Hush_, Dogs!" implored Flame. "This is Father's Lay Reader!"

"Your--Lay Reader!" contradicted the young man gallantly. It _was_
pretty gallant of him, wasn't it? Considering everything?

In another instant four _shapes_ with teeth in them came hurtling
through!

If Flame had never in her life admired the Lay Reader she certainly
would have admired him now for the sheer cold-blooded foresight which
had presaged the inevitable reaction of the dogs upon the mush and the
mush upon the dogs. With a single sniff at his heels, a prod of paws
in his stomach, the onslaught swerved--and passed. Guzzlingly from
four s