e creaks on the stairs that make it so awfully lonely
all of a sudden," argued Flame. "It must be because the dogs snore
so.... No mere man could make it so empty." With a precipitous nudge
of the memory she dashed to the door and helloed to the fast
retreating figure. "Oh, Bertrand! Bertrand!" she called, "I got sort
of mixed up. It's the second door on the left! And if you don't find
'em there you'd better go up in Mother's room and turn out the silver
chest! _Hurry_!"

Rallying back to the bright Christmas kitchen for the real business at
hand, an accusing blush rose to the young spot where the dimple had
been.

"Oh, Shucks!" parried Flame. "I kissed a Bishop before I was
five!--What's a Lay Reader?" As one humanely willing to condone the
future as well as the past she rolled up her white sleeves without
further introspection, and dragged out from the protecting shadow of
the sink the "humpiest box" which had so excited her emotions at home
in an earlier hour of the day. Cracklingly under her eager fingers the
clumsy cover slid off, exposing once more to her enraptured gaze the
gay-colored muslin layer of animal masks leering fatuously up at her.

Only with her hand across her mouth did she keep from crying out. Very
swiftly her glance traveled from the grinning muslin faces before her
to the solemn fur faces on the other side of the room. The hand across
her mouth tightened.

"Why, it's something like Creation," she giggled. "This having to
decide which face to give to which animal!"

As expeditiously as possible she made her selection.

"Poor Miss Flora must be so tired of being so plain," she thought.
"I'll give her the first choice of everything! Something really
lovely! It can't help resting her!"

With this kind idea in mind she selected for Miss Flora a canary's
face.--Softly yellow! Bland as treacle! Its swelling, tender muslin
throat fairly reeking with the suggestion of innocent song! No one
gazing once upon such ornithological purity would ever speak a harsh
word again, even to a sparrow!

Nudging Miss Flora cautiously from her sonorous nap, Flame beguiled
her with half a doughnut to her appointed chair, boosted her still
cautiously to her pinnacle of books, and with various swift
adjustments of fasteners, knotting of tie-strings,--an extra breathing
hole jabbed through the beak, slipped the canary's beautiful blond
countenance over Miss Flora's frankly grizzled mug.

For a single terrifying in