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Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs
by
“Well, I,” triumphed Flame, “have got a chance to spend Christmas just exactly the way I want to!… The one chance perhaps in a life-time, it would seem!… No heart aches involved, no hurt feelings, no disappointments for anybody! Nobody left out! Nobody dragged in! Why Father-Funny,” she cried. “It’s an experience that might distinguish me all my life long! Even when I’m very old and crumpled people would point me out on the street and say ‘There’s some one who once spent Christmas just exactly the way she wanted to’!” To a limpness almost unbelievable the eager little figure wilted down within its blanket-wrapper swathings. “And now …” deprecated Flame, “Mother has gone and wished me on Aunt Minna instead!” With a sudden revival of enthusiasm two small hands crept out of their big cuffs and clutched her Father by the ears. “Oh Father-Funny!” pleaded Flame. “If you were too old to want it for a ‘holler’ day and not quite old enough to need it for a holy day … so that all you asked in the world was just to have it a holly day! Something all bright! Red and green! And tinsel! and jingle-bells!… How would you like to have Aunt Minna wished on you?… It isn’t you know as though Aunt Minna was a–a pleasant person,” she argued with perfectly indisputable logic. “You couldn’t wish one ‘A Merry Aunt Minna’ any more than you could wish ’em a ‘Merry Good Friday’!” From the clutch on his ears the small hands crept to a point at the back of his neck where they encompassed him suddenly in a crunching hug. “Oh Father-Funny!” implored Flame, “You were a Lay Reader once! You must have had very amorous eyes! Couldn’t you please persuade Mother that…”
With a crisp flutter of skirts Flame’s Mother, herself, appeared abruptly in the door. Her manner was very excited.
“Why wherever in the world have you people been?” she cried. “Are you stone deaf? Didn’t you hear the telephone? Couldn’t you even hear me calling? Your Uncle Wally is worse! That is he’s better but he thinks he’s worse! And they want us to come at once! It’s something about a new will! The Lawyer telephoned! He advises us to come at once! They’ve sent an automobile for us! It will be here any minute!… But whatever in the world shall we do about Flame?” she cried distractedly. “You know how Uncle Wally feels about having young people in the house! And she can’t possibly go to Aunt Minna’s till to-morrow! And….”
“But you see I’m not going to Aunt Minna’s!” announced Flame quite serenely. Slipping down from her Father’s lap she stood with a round, roly-poly flannel sort of dignity confronting both her parents. “Father says I don’t have to!”
“Why, Flame!” protested her Father.
“No, of course, you didn’t say it with your mouth,” admitted Flame. “But you said it with your skin and bones!–I could feel it working.”
“Not go to your Aunt Minna’s?” gasped her Mother. “What do you want to do?… Stay at home and spend Christmas with the Lay Reader?”
“When you and Father talk like that,” murmured Flame with some hauteur, “I don’t know whether you’re trying to run him down … or run him up.”
“Well, how do you feel about him yourself?” veered her Father quite irrelevantly.
“Oh, I like him–some,” conceded Flame. In her bright cheeks suddenly an even brighter color glowed. “I like him when he leaves out the Litany,” she said. “I’ve told him I like him when he leaves out the Litany.–He’s leaving it out more and more I notice.–Yes, I like him very much.”
“But this Aunt Minna business,” veered back her Father suddenly. “What do you want to do? That’s just the question. What do you want to do?”
“Yes, what do you want to do?” panted her Mother.
“I want to make a Christmas for myself!” said Flame. “Oh, of course, I know perfectly well,” she agreed, “that I could go to a dozen places in the Parish and be cry-babied over for my presumable loneliness. And probably I should cry a little,” she wavered, “towards the dessert–when the plum pudding came in and it wasn’t like Mother’s.–But if I made a Christmas of my own–” she rallied instantly. “Everything about it would be brand-new and unassociated! I tell you I want to make a Christmas of my own! It’s the chance of a life-time! Even Father sees that it’s the chance of a life-time!”