e chicken-yard that she had come running this time but
only from her Husband's Sermon-Writing-Room in the attic.

"Oh don't they though?" gloated Flame. "Well, they've taken this one,
anyway! Taken it by storm, I mean! Scratched all the green paint off
the front door! Torn a hole big as a cavern in the Barberry Hedge!
Pushed the sun-dial through a bulkhead!--If it snows to-night the
cellar'll be a Glacier! And--"

"Dogs--do--not--take--houses," persisted Flame's mother. She was still
persisting it indeed when she returned to her husband's study.

Her husband, it seemed, had not noticed her absence. Still poring over
the tomes and commentaries incidental to the preparation of his next
Sunday's sermon his fine face glowed half frown, half ecstasy, in the
December twilight, while close at his elbow all unnoticed a smoking
kerosine lamp went smudging its acrid path to the ceiling. Dusky lock
for dusky lock, dreamy eye for dreamy eye, smoking lamp for smoking
lamp, it might have been a short-haired replica of Flame herself.

"Oh if Flame had only been 'set' like the maternal side of the house!"
reasoned Flame's Mother. "Or merely dreamy like her Father! Her Father
being only dreamy could sometimes be diverted from his dreams! But to
be 'set' and 'dreamy' both? Absolutely 'set' on being absolutely
'dreamy'? That was Flame!" With renewed tenacity Flame's Mother
reverted to Truth as Truth. "Dogs do _not_ take houses!" she affirmed
with unmistakable emphasis.

"Eh? What?" jumped her husband. "Dogs? Dogs? Who said anything about
dogs?" With a fretted pucker between his brows he bent to his work
again. "You interrupted me," he reproached her. "My sermon is about
Hell-Fire.--I had all but smelled it.--It was very disagreeable." With
a gesture of impatience he snatched up his notes and tore them in two.
"I think I will write about the Garden of Eden instead!" he rallied.
"The Garden of Eden in Iris time! Florentina Alba everywhere!
Whiteness! Sweetness!--Now let me see,--orris root I believe is
deducted from the Florentina Alba--."

"U--m--m--m," sniffed Flame's Mother. With an impulse purely practical
she started for the kitchen. "The season happens to be Christmas
time," she suggested bluntly. "Now if you could see your way to make a
sermon that smelt like doughnuts and plum-pudding--"

"Doughnuts?" queried her Husband and hurried after her. Supplementing
the far, remote Glory-of-God expression in his face, the
glory-of-do