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“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 Butler. “It ain’t that I mind eatin’ with them on All Saints’ Day or Fourth of July or even Sundays. But come Christmas Time it seems like I craves to eat with More Humans…. I got a nephew less’n twenty miles away. He’s got cider in his cellar. And plum puddings. His woman she raises guinea chickens. And mince pies there is. And tasty gravies.–But me I mixes dog bread and milk–dog bread and milk–till I can’t see nothing–think nothing but mush. And him with cider in his cellar!… It ain’t as though Mr. Delcote ever came himself to prove anything,” he argued. “Not he! Not Christmas Time! It’s travelling he is…. He’s had … misfortunes,” he confided darkly. “He travels for ’em same as some folks travels for their healths. Most especially at Christmas Time he travels for his misfortunes! He …”

“Mr. Delcote?” quickened Flame. “Mr. Delcote?” (Now at last was the mysterious tenancy about to be divulged?)

“All he says,” persisted the old Butler. “All he says is ‘Now Barret,’–that’s me, ‘Now Barret I trust your honor to see that the dogs ain’t neglected just because it’s Christmas. There ain’t no reason, Barret’, he says, ‘why innocent dogs should suffer Christmas just because everybody else does. They ain’t done nothing…. It won’t do now Barret’, he says, ‘for you to give ’em their dinner at dawn when they ain’t accustomed to it, and a pail of water, and shut ’em up while you go off for the day with any barrel of cider. You know what dogs is, Barret’, he says. ‘And what they isn’t. They’ve got to be fed regular’, he says, ‘and with discipline. Else there’s deaths.–Some natural. Some unnatural. And some just plain spectacular from furniture falling on their arguments. So if there’s any fatalities come this Christmas Time, Barret’, he says, ‘or any undue gains in weight or losses in weight, I shall infer, Barret’, he says, ‘that you was absent without leave.’ … It don’t look like a very wholesome Christmas for me,” sighed the old Butler. “Not either way. Not what you’d call wholesome.”