FullReads

“That was Bertrand!” said Flame. “My Father’s Lay Reader.”

It was the man’s turn now to jump to his feet.

“What?” he cried.

“I sent him for the carving knife,” said Flame.

“What?” repeated the man. Consternation versus Hilarity went racing suddenly like a cat-and-dog combat across his eyes.

“Yes,” said Flame.

From the outside door the sound of furious knocking occurred suddenly.

“That sounds to me like–like parents’ knocking,” shivered Flame.

“It sounds to me like an escaped Lay Reader,” said her Host.

With a single impulse they both started for the door.

“Don’t worry, Little Girl,” whispered the young Stranger in the dark hall.

“I’ll try not to,” quivered Flame.

They were both right, it seemed.

It was Parents and the Lay Reader.

All three breathless, all three excited, all three reproachful,–they swept into the warm, balsam-scented Rattle-Pane House with a gust of frost, a threat of disaster.

“F–lame,” sighed her Father.

“Flame!” scolded her Mother.

“Flame?” implored the Lay Reader.

“What a pretty name,” beamed the Master of the House. “Pray be seated, everybody,” he gestured graciously to left and right,–shoving one dog expeditiously under the table with his foot, while he yanked another out of a chair with his least gesticulating hand. “This is certainly a very great pleasure, I assure you,” he affirmed distinctly to Miss Flamande Nourice. “Returning quite unexpectedly to my new house this lonely Christmas evening,” he explained very definitely to the Rev. Flamande Nourice, “I can’t express to you what it means to me to find this pleasant gathering of neighbors waiting here to welcome me! And when I think of the effort you must have made to get here, Mr. Bertrand,” he beamed. “A young man of all your obligations and–complications–“

“Pleasant … gathering of neighbors?” questioned Mrs. Nourice 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.