with
some emotion.

"Oh, I forgot," deprecated the Master of the House with real concern.
"Your Christmas season is not, of course, as inherently 'pleasant' as
one might wish.... I was told at the railroad station how you and Mr.
Nourice had been called away by the illness of a relative."

"We were called away," confided Mrs. Nourice with increasing asperity,
"called away at considerable inconvenience--by a very sick
relative--to receive the present of a Piebald pony."

"Oh, goody!" quickened Flame and collapsed again under the weight of
her Mother's glance.

"And then came this terrible telephone message," shuddered her Mother.
"The implied dishonor of one of your Father's most trusted--most
trusted associates!"

"I was right in the midst of such an interesting book," deplored her
Father. "And Uncle Wally wouldn't lend it."

"So we borrowed Uncle Wally's new automobile and started right for
home!" explained her Mother. "It was at the Junction that we made
connections with the Constable and his prisoner."

"His--victim," intercepted the Lay Reader coldly.

At this interception everybody turned suddenly and looked at the Lay
Reader. His mouth was twisted very slightly to one side. It gave him a
rather unpleasant snarling expression. If this expression had been
vocal instead of muscular it would have shocked his hearers.

"Your Father had to go on board the train and identify him," persisted
Flame's Mother. "It was very distressing.... The Constable was most
unwilling to release him. Your Father had to use every kind of an
argument."

"Every ... kind," mused her Father. "He doesn't even deny being in the
house," continued her Mother, "being in my closet, ... being caught
with a--a--"

"With a silver carving knife and fork in his hand," intercepted the
Lay Reader hastily.

"Yet all the time he persists," frowned Flame's Mother, "that there is
some one in the world who can give a perfectly good explanation if
only,--he won't even say 'he or she' but 'it', if only 'it' would."

Something in the stricken expression of her daughter's face brought a
sudden flicker of suspicion to the Mother's eyes.

"_You_ don't know anything about this, do you, Flame?" she demanded.
"Is it remotely possible that after your promise to me,--your sacred
promise to me--?" The whole structure of the home,--of mutual
confidence,--of all the Future itself, crackled and toppled in her
voice.

To the Lay Reader's face, and right _t