FullReads

“Turkey?” quizzed the Lay Reader who had dined that day on corned beef.

“Oh, of course, mush was what they were intended to have,” admitted Flame. “Piles and piles of mush! Extra piles and piles of mush I should judge because it was Christmas Day!… But don’t you think mush does seem a bit dull?” she questioned appealingly. “For Christmas Day? Oh, I did think a turkey would taste so good!”

“It certainly would,” conceded the Lay Reader.

“So if you’d help me–” wheedled Flame, “it would be well-worth staying blindfolded for…. For, of course, I shall have to stay blindfolded. But I can see a little of the floor,” she admitted, “though I couldn’t of course break my promise to my Mother by seeing you.”

“No, certainly not,” admitted the Lay Reader.

“Otherwise–” murmured Flame with a faint gesture towards the door.

“I will help you,” said the Lay Reader.

“Where is your hand?” fumbled Flame.

“Here!” attested the Lay Reader.

“Lead us to the dogs!” commanded Flame.

Now the Captain of a ship feels genuinely obligated, it would seem, to go down with his ship if tragic circumstances so insist. But he never,–so far as I’ve ever heard, felt the slightest obligation whatsoever to go down with another captain’s ship,–to be martyred in short for any job not distinctly his own. So Bertrand Lorello,–who for the cause he served, wouldn’t have hesitated an instant probably, to be torn by Hindoo lions,–devoured by South Sea cannibals,–fallen upon by a chapel spire,–trampled to death even at a church rummage sale,–saw no conceivable reason at the moment for being eaten by dogs at a purely social function.

Even groping through a balsam-scented darkness with one hand clasping the thrilly fingers of a lovely young girl, this distaste did not altogether leave him.

“This–this mush that you speak of?” he questioned quite abruptly. “With the dogs as–as nervous as you say,–so unfortunately liable to stampede? Don’t you think that perhaps a little mush served first,–a good deal of mush I would say, served first,–might act as a–as a sort of anesthetic?… Somewhere in the past I am almost sure I have read that mush in sufficient quantities, you understand, is really quite a–quite an anesthetic.”

Very palpably in the darkness he heard a single throaty swallow.

“Lead us to the–mush,” said Flame.

In another instant the door-knob turned in his hand, and the cheerful kitchen lamp-light,–glitter of tinsel,–flare of red ribbons,–savor of foods, smote sharply on him.

“Oh, I say, how jolly!” cried the Lay Reader.

“Don’t let me bump into anything!” begged the blindfolded Flame, still holding tight to his hand.

“Oh, I say, Miss Flame,” kindled the entranced Lay Reader, “it’s you that look the jolliest! All in white that way! I’ve never seen you wear that to church, have I?”

“This is a pinafore,” confided Flame coolly. “A bungalow apron, the fashion papers call it…. No, you’ve never seen me wear–this to church.”

“O–h,” said the Lay Reader.

“Get the mush,” said Flame.

“The what?” asked the Lay Reader.

“It’s there on the table by the window,” gestured Flame. “Please set all four dishes on the floor,–each dish, of course, in a separate corner,” ordered Flame. “There is a reason…. And then open the parlor door.”

“Open the parlor door?” questioned the Lay Reader. It was no mere grammatical form of speech but a real query in the Lay Reader’s mind.

“Well, maybe I’d better,” conceded Flame. “Lead me to it.”

Roused into frenzy by the sound of a stranger’s step, a stranger’s voice, the four dogs fumed and seethed on the other side of the panel.

“Sniff–Sniff–Snort!” the Red Setter sucked at the crack in the door.

“Woof! Woof! Woof!” roared the big Wolf Hound.

“Slam! Bang! Slash!” slapped the Dalmatian’s crisp weight.

“Yi! Yi! Yi!” sang the Bull Dog.

“Hush! Hush, Dogs!” implored Flame. “This is Father’s Lay Reader!”

“Your–Lay Reader!” contradicted the young man gallantly. It was pretty gallant of him, wasn’t it? Considering everything?

In another instant four shapes with teeth in them came hurtling through!

If Flame had never in her life admired the Lay Reader she certainly would have admired him now for the sheer cold-blooded foresight which had presaged the inevitable reaction of the dogs upon the mush and the mush upon the dogs. With a single sniff at his heels, a prod of paws in his stomach, the onslaught swerved–and passed. Guzzlingly from four separate corners of the room issued sounds of joy and fulfillment.