"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!"