oung cheeks fairly blazed their bright reaction. Frost and speed
quickened her breath. Glint for glint her shining eyes challenged the
moon. Fearful even yet that some tardy admonition might overtake her
she sped like a deer through the darkness.

It was a dull-smelling night. Pretty, but very dull-smelling.
Disdainfully her nostrils crinkled their disappointment.

"Christmas Time adventures ought to smell like Christmas!" she
scolded. "Maybe if I'm ever President," she argued, "I won't do so
awfully well with the Tariff or things like that! But Christmas shall
smell of Christmas! Not just of frozen mud! And camphor balls!... I'll
have great vats of Fir Balsam essence at every street corner! And
gigantic atomizers! And every passerby shall be sprayed! And stores!
And churches! And--And everybody who doesn't like Christmas shall be
_dipped_!"

Under her feet the smoothish village road turned suddenly into the
harsh and hobbly ruts of a country lane. With fluctuant blackness
against immutable blackness great sweeping pine trees swished weirdly
into the horizon. Where the hobbly lane curved darkly into a meadow
through a snarl of winter-stricken willows the rattle of a loose
window-pane smote quite distinctly on the ear. It was a horrid,
deserted sound. And with the instinctive habit of years Flame's little
hand clutched at her heart. Then quite abruptly she laughed aloud.

"Oh you can't scare me any more, you gloomy old Rattle-Pane House!"
she laughed. "You're not deserted now! People are Christmasing in you!
Whether you like it or not you're being Christmased!"

Very tentatively she puckered her lips to a whistle. Almost instantly
from the darkness ahead a dog's bark rang out, deep, sonorous, faintly
suspicious. With a little chuckle of joy she crawled through the
Barberry hedge and emerged for a single instant only at her full
height before three furry shapes came hurtling out of the darkness
and toppled her over backwards.

"Stop, Beautiful-Lovely!" she gasped. "Stop, Lopsy! Behave yourself,
Blunder-Blot! _Sillies_! Don't you know I'm the lady that was talking
to you this morning through the picket fence? Don't you know I'm the
lady that fed you the box of cereal?--Oh dear--Oh dear--Oh dear," she
struggled. "I knew, of course, that there were three dogs--but who
ever in the world would have guessed that three could be so many?"

As expeditiously as possible she picked herself up and bolted for the
house with tw