Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs | Page 4

the red setter's kindled nose glowed and snorted with dragonlike ferocity. Without knock or ring the door-handle creaked and turned, three ecstatic shapes went hurtling through a yellow glare into the hall beyond, and Flame found herself staring up into the blinking, astonished eyes of the crumpled old man with the red waistcoat.
"G--Good evening,--Butler!" she rallied.
"Good evening, Miss!" stammered the Butler.
"I've--I've come to call," confided Flame.
"To--call?" stammered the Butler.
"Yes," conceded Flame. "I--I don't happen to have an engraved card with me." Before the continued imperturbability of the old Butler all subterfuge seemed suddenly quite useless. "I never have had an engraved card," she confided quite abruptly. "But you might tell Miss Flora if you please--" ... Would nothing crack the Butler's imperturbability?... Well maybe she could prove just a little bit imperturbable herself! "Oh! Butlers don't 'tell' people things, do they?... They always 'announce' things, don't they?... Well, kindly announce to Miss Flora that the--the Minister's Daughter is--at the door!... Oh, no! It isn't asking for a subscription or anything!" she hastened quite suddenly to explain. "It's just a Christian call!... B--Being so nervous and lost on the train and everything ... we thought Miss Flora might be glad to know that there were neighbors.... We live so near and everything.... And can run like the wind! Oh, not Mother, of course!... She's a bit stout! And Father starts all right but usually gets thinking of something else! But I...? Kindly announce to Miss Flora," she repeated with palpable crispness, "that the Minister's Daughter is at the door!"
Fixedly old, fixedly crumpled, fixedly imperturbable, the Butler stepped back a single jerky pace and bowed her towards the parlor.
"Now," thrilled Flame, "the adventure really begins."
It certainly was a sad and romantic looking parlor, and strangely furnished, Flame thought, for even "moving times." Through a maze of bulging packing boxes and barrels she picked her way to a faded rose-colored chair that flanked the fire-place. That the chair was already half occupied by a pile of ancient books and four dusty garden trowels only served to intensify the general air of gloom. Presiding over all, two dreadful bouquets of long-dead grasses flared wanly on the mantle-piece. And from the tattered old landscape paper on the walls Civil War heroes stared regretfully down through pale and tarnished frames.
"Dear me ... dear me," shivered Flame. "They're not going to Christmas at all ... evidently! Not a sprig of holly anywhere! Not a ravel of tinsel! Not a jingle bell!... Oh she must have lost a lot of lovers," thrilled Flame. "I can bring her flowers, anyway! My very first Paper White Narcissus! My--."
With a scrape of the foot the Butler made known his return.
"Miss Flora!" he announced.
With a catch of her breath Flame jumped to her feet and turned to greet the biggest, ugliest, most brindled, most wizened Bull Dog she had ever seen in her life.
"Miss Flora!" repeated the old Butler succinctly.
"Miss Flora?" gasped Flame. "Why.... Why, I thought Miss Flora was a Lady! Why--"
"Miss Flora is indeed a very grand lady, Miss!" affirmed the Butler without a flicker of expression. "Of a pedigree so famous ... so distinguished ... so ..." Numerically on his fingers he began to count the distinctions. "Five prizes this year! And three last! Do you mind the chop?" he gloated. "The breadth! The depth!... Did you never hear of alauntes?" he demanded. "Them bull-baiting dogs that was invented by the second Duke of York or thereabouts in the year 1406?"
"Oh my Glory!" thrilled Flame. "Is Miss Flora as old as that?"
"Miss Flora," said the old Butler with some dignity, "is young--hardly two in fact--so young that she seems to me but just weaned."
With her great eyes goggled to a particularly disconcerting sort of scrutiny Miss Flora sprang suddenly forward to investigate the visitor.
As though by a preconcerted signal a chair crashed over in the hall and the wolf hound and the setter and the coach dog came hurtling back in a furiously cordial onslaught. With wags and growls and yelps of joy all four dogs met in Flame's lap.
"They seem to like me, don't they?" triumphed Flame. Intermittently through the melee of flapping ears,--shoving shoulders,--waving paws, her beaming little face proved the absolute sincerity of that triumph. "Mother's never let me have any dogs," she confided. "Mother thinks they're not--Oh, of course, I realize that four dogs is a--a good many," she hastened diplomatically to concede to a certain sudden droop around the old Butler's mouth corners.
From his slow, stooping poke of the sulky fire the old Butler glanced up with a certain plaintive intentness.
"All dogs is too many," he affirmed.
"Come Christmas time I wishes I was dead."
"Wish you were dead ... at Christmas Time?" cried Flame. Acute shock was in her protest.
"It's the feedin'," sighed the old