"Oh, dear me, dear me," struggled Flame. "Maybe a carol would calm them."
To a certain extent a carol surely did. The hair-cloth parlor of the Rattle-Pane House would have calmed anything. And the mousey smell of the old piano fairly jerked the dogs to its senile old ivory keyboard. Cocking their ears to its quavering treble notes,—snorting their nostrils through its gritty guttural basses, they watched Flame's facile fingers sweep from sound to sound.
"Oh, what a—glorious lark!" quivered Flame. "What a—a lonely glorious lark!"
Timidly at first but with an increasing abandon, half laughter and half tears, the clear young soprano voice took up its playful paraphrase,
"God rest you merrie—animals!
Let nothing you dismay!"
caroled Flame.
"For—"
It was just at this moment that Beautiful-Lovely, the Wolf Hound,—muzzled lifted, eyes rolling, jabbed his shrill nose into space and harmony with a carol of his own,—octaves of agony,—Heaven knows what of ecstasy,—that would have hurried an owl to its nest, a ghoul to a moving picture show!
"Wow-Wow—Wow!" caroled Beautiful-Lovely. "Ww—ow—Ww—ow—Ww—Oo—Wwwww!"
As Flame's hands dropped from the piano the unmistakable creak of red wheels sounded on the frozen driveway just outside.