eyes of
the Master of the House fixed speculatively on the big turkey.

"I'm afraid everything is very cold," she confided with distinctly
formal regret.

"Not for anything," laughed Delcote quite suddenly, "would I have kept
you waiting--if I had only known."

Two spots of color glowed hotly in the girl's cheeks.

"It was not for you I was waiting," she said coldly.

"N--o?" teased Delcote. "You astonish me. For whom, then? Some
incredible wight who, worse than late--isn't going to show up at
all?... Heaven sent, I consider myself.... How else could so little a
girl have managed so big a turkey?"

"There ... isn't any ... carving knife," whispered Flame.

The tears were glistening on her cheeks now instead of just in her
eyes. A less observing man than Delcote might have thought the tears
were really for the carving knife.

"What? No carving knife?" he roared imperiously. "And the house
guaranteed 'furnished'?" Very furiously he began to hunt all around
the kitchen in the most impossible places.

"Oh, it's furnished all right," quivered Flame. "It's just chock-full
of dead things! Pressed flowers! And old plush bags! And pressed
flowers! And--and pressed flowers!"

"Great Heavens!" groaned Delcote. "And I came here to forget 'dead
things'!"

"Your--your Butler said you'd had misfortunes," murmured Flame.

"Misfortunes?" rallied Delcote. "I should think I had! In a single
year I've lost health,--money,--most everything I own in the world
except my man and my dogs!"

"They're ... good dogs," testified Flame.

"And the Doctor's sent me here for six months," persisted Delcote,
"before he'll even hear of my plunging into things again!"

"Six months is a--a good long time," said Flame. "If you'd turn the
hems we could make yellow curtains for the parlor in no time at all!"

"W--we?" stammered Delcote.

"M--Mother," said Flame. "... It's a long time since any dogs lived in
the Rattle-Pane House."

"Rattle-_Brain_ house?" bridled Delcote.

"Rattle-_Pane_ House," corrected Flame.

A little bit worriedly Delcote returned to his seat.

"I shall have to rend the turkey, instead of carve it," he said.

"Rend it," acquiesced Flame.

In the midst of the rending a dark frown appeared between Delcote's
eyes.

"These--these guests that you were expecting--?" he questioned.

"Oh, _stop_!" cried Flame. "Dreadful as I am I never--never would have
dreamed of inviting 'guests'!"

"This 'guest' then," frowne