With a single impulse they both started for the door.
"Don't worry, Little Girl," whispered the young Stranger in the dark hall.
"I'll try not to," quivered Flame.
They were both right, it seemed.
It was Parents and the Lay Reader.
All three breathless, all three excited, all three reproachful,—they swept into the warm, balsam-scented Rattle-Pane House with a gust of frost, a threat of disaster.
"F—lame," sighed her Father.
"Flame!" scolded her Mother.
"Flame?" implored the Lay Reader.
"What a pretty name," beamed the Master of the House. "Pray be seated, everybody," he gestured graciously to left and right,—shoving one dog expeditiously under the table with his foot, while he yanked another out of a chair with his least gesticulating hand. "This is certainly a very great pleasure, I assure you," he affirmed distinctly to Miss Flamande Nourice. "Returning quite unexpectedly to my new house this lonely Christmas evening," he explained very definitely to the Rev. Flamande Nourice, "I can't express to you what it means to me to find this pleasant gathering of neighbors waiting here to welcome me! And when I think of the effort you must have made to get here, Mr. Bertrand," he beamed. "A young man of all your obligations and—complications—"