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To Blunder-Blot, the trim Dalmatian, Flame assigned the Parrot’s head, arrogantly beaked, gorgeously variegated, altogether querulous.

For Lopsy, the crafty Setter, she selected a White Rabbit’s artless, pink-eared visage.

Yet out of the whole box of masks it had been the Bengal Tiger’s fiercely bewhiskered visage that had fascinated Flame the most. Regretfully from its more or less nondescript companions, she picked up the Bengal Tiger now and pulled at its real, bristle-whiskers. In one of the chairs a dog stirred quite irrelevantly. Cocking her own head towards the wood-shed Flame could not be perfectly sure whether she heard a twinge of cat or a twinge of conscience. The unflinching glare of the Bengal Tiger only served to increase her self-reproach.

“After all,” reasoned Flame, “it would be easy enough to set another place! And pile a few extra books!… I’m almost sure I saw a black plush bag in the parlor…. If the cat could be put in something like a black plush bag,–something perfectly enveloping like that? So that not a single line of its–its figure could be observed?… And it had a new head given it? A perfectly sufficient head–like a Bengal Tiger?–I see no reason why–“

In five minutes the deed was accomplished. Its lovely sinuous “figure” reduced to the stolid contour of a black plush work-bag, its small uneasy head thrust into the roomy muslin cranium of the Bengal Tiger, the astonished Cat found herself slumping soggily on a great teetering pile of books, staring down as best she might through the Bengal Tiger’s ear at the weirdest assemblage of animals which any domestic cat of her acquaintance had ever been forced to contemplate.

Coincidental with the appearance of the Cat a faint thrill passed through the rest of the company…. Nothing very much! No more, no less indeed, than passes through any company at the introduction of purely extraneous matter. From the empty plate which she had commandeered as a temporary pillow the Yellow Canary lifted an interrogative beak…. That was all! At Flame’s left, the White-Haired Rabbit emitted an incongruous bark…. Scarcely worth reporting! Across the table the Giraffe thumped a white, plumy tail. Thoughtfully the Parrot’s hooked nose slanted slightly to one side.

“Oh, I wish Bertrand would come!” fretted Flame. “Maybe this time he’ll notice my ‘Christmas Crossing’ sign!” she chuckled with sudden triumph. “Talk about surprises!” Very diplomatically as she spoke she broke another doughnut in two and drew all the dogs’ attention to herself. Almost hysterical with amusement she surveyed the scene before her. “Well, at least we can have ‘grace’ before the Preacher comes!” she laughed. A step on the gravel walk startled her suddenly. In a flash she had jerked down the blind-folding handkerchief across her eyes again, and folding her hands and the doughnut before her burst softly into paraphrase.

‘Now we–sit us down to eat
Thrice our share of Flesh and Sweet.
If we should burst before we’re through,
Oh what in–Dogdom shall we do?’

Thus it was that the Master of the House, returning unexpectedly to his unfamiliar domicile, stumbled upon a scene that might have shaken the reason of a less sober young man.

Startled first by the unwonted illumination from his kitchen windows, and second by the unprecedented aroma of Fir Balsam that greeted him even through the key-hole of his new front door, his feelings may well be imagined when groping through the dingy hall he first beheld the gallows-like structure reared in the kitchen doorway.

“My God!” he ejaculated, “Barrett is getting ready to hang himself! Gone mad probably–or something!”

Curdled with horror he forced himself to the object, only to note with convulsive relief but increasing bewilderment the cheerful phrasing and ultimate intent of the structure itself. “‘Christmas Crossing’?” he repeated blankly. “‘Look out for Surprises’?–‘Shop, Cook, and Glisten’?” With his hand across his eyes he reeled back slightly against the wall. “It is I that have gone mad!” he gasped.