stant Miss Flora's crinkled sides
tightened,--a snarl like ripped silk slipped through her straining
lungs. Then once convinced that the mask was not a gas-box she
accepted the liberty with reasonable _sang-froid_ and sat blinking
beadily out through the canary's yellow-rimmed eye-sockets with frank
curiosity towards such proceedings as were about to follow. It was
easy to see she was accustomed to sitting in chairs.

For the Wolf Hound Flame chose a Giraffe's head. Certain anatomical
similarities seemed to make the choice wise. With a long vividly
striped stockinet neck wrinkling like a mousquetaire glove, the neat
small head that so closely fitted his own neat small head, the
tweaked, interrogative ears,--Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf Hound, reared
up majestically in his own chair. He also, once convinced that the
mask was not a gas-box, resigned himself to the inevitable, and
corporeally independent of such vain props as Chemistries or Sermons,
lolled his fine height against the mahogany chair-back.

To Blunder-Blot, the trim Dalmatian, Flame assigned the Parrot's head,
arrogantly beaked, gorgeously variegated, altogether querulous.

For Lopsy, the crafty Setter, she selected a White Rabbit's artless,
pink-eared visage.

Yet out of the whole box of masks it had been the Bengal Tiger's
fiercely bewhiskered visage that had fascinated Flame the most.
Regretfully from its more or less nondescript companions, she picked
up the Bengal Tiger now and pulled at its real, bristle-whiskers. In
one of the chairs a dog stirred quite irrelevantly. Cocking her own
head towards the wood-shed Flame could not be perfectly sure whether
she heard a twinge of cat or a twinge of conscience. The unflinching
glare of the Bengal Tiger only served to increase her self-reproach.

"After all," reasoned Flame, "it would be easy enough to set another
place! And pile a few extra books!... I'm almost sure I saw a black
plush bag in the parlor.... If the cat could be put in something like
a black plush bag,--something perfectly enveloping like that? So that
not a single line of its--its figure could be observed?... And it had
a new head given it? A perfectly sufficient head--like a Bengal
Tiger?--I see no reason why--"

In five minutes the deed was accomplished. Its lovely sinuous "figure"
reduced to the stolid contour of a black plush work-bag, its small
uneasy head thrust into the roomy muslin cranium of the Bengal Tiger,
the astonished Cat fo