scornful,--his narrowing
eyes...? Goodness knows what she thought of his suddenly narrowing
eyes!

In an instant she had jumped from her retreat to the floor.

"Who are you, anyway?" she demanded. "How dare you come here like
this? Butting into my party!... And--and spoiling my discipline with
the dogs! Who are you, I say?"

With Demon Direful, alias Beautiful-Lovely tugging wildly at his
restraint, the Stranger's scornful mouth turned precipitously up,
instead of down.

"Who am I?" he said. "Why, no one special at all except just--the
Master of the House!"

"_What_?" gasped Flame.

"Earle Delcote," bowed the Stranger.

With a little hand that trembled perfectly palpably Flame reached back
to the arm of the big carved chair for support.

"Why--why, but Mr. Delcote is an old man," she gasped. "I'm almost
sure he's an old man."

The smile on Delcote's mouth spread suddenly to his eyes.

"Not yet,--Thank God!" he bowed.

With a panic-stricken glance at doors, windows, cracks, the chimney
pipe itself, Flame sank limply down in her seat again and gestured
towards the empty place opposite her.

"Have a--have a chair," she stammered. Great tears welled suddenly to
her eyes. "Oh, I--I know I oughtn't to be here," she struggled. "It's
perfectly ... awful! I haven't the slightest right! Not the slightest!
It's the--the cheekiest thing that any girl in the world ever did!...
But your Butler said...! And he did so want to go away and--And I did
so love your dogs! And I did so want to make _one_ Christmas in the
world just--exactly the way I wanted it! And--and--Mother and Father
will be crazy!... And--and--"

Without a single glance at anything except herself, the Master of the
House slipped back into his chair.

"Have a heart!" he said.

Flame did _not_ accept this suggestion. With a very severe frown and
downcast eyes she sat staring at the table. It seemed a very cheerless
table suddenly, with all the dogs in various stages of disheveled
finery grouped blatantly around their Master's chair.

"I can at least have my cat," she thought, "my--faithful cat!" In
another instant she had slipped from the table, extracted poor Puss
from a clutter of pans in the back of a cupboard, stripped the last
shred of masquerade from her outraged form, and brought her back
growling and bristling to perch on one arm of the high-backed chair.
"Th--ere!" said Flame.

Glancing up from this innocent triumph, she encountered the