If you don't like Christmas stories, don't read this one!
And if you don't like dogs I don't know just what to advise you to do!
For I warn you perfectly frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and
distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story
whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest
in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular brand of brain and ink can conjure up on a single keyboard! And very large-sized dogs shall romp through every page! And the mercury shiver perpetually in the vicinity of zero! And every foot of earth be crusty-brown and bare with no white snow at all till the very last moment when you'd just about given up hope! And all the heart of the story is very,--oh _very_ young!
For purposes of propriety and general historical authenticity there
are of course parents in the story. And one or two other oldish
persons. But they all go away just as early in the narrative as I can
manage it.--Are obliged to go away!
Yet lest you find in this general combination of circumstances some
sinister threat of audacity, let me conventionalize the story at once
by opening it at that most conventional of all conventional
Christmas-story hours,--the Twilight of Christmas Eve.
Nuff said?--Christmas Eve, you remember? Twilight? Awfully cold
weather? And somebody very young?
Now for the story itself!
After five blustering, wintry weeks of village speculation and gossip
there was of course considerable satisfaction in being the first to
solve the mysterious holiday tenancy of the Rattle-Pane House.
Breathless with excitement Flame Nourice telephoned the news from the
village post-office. From a pedestal of boxes fairly bulging with
red-wheeled go-carts, one keen young elbow rammed for balance into a
gay glassy shelf of stick-candy, green tissue garlands tickling
across her cheek, she sped the message to her mother.
"O Mother-Funny!" triumphed Flame. "I've found out who's Christmasing
at the Rattle-Pane House!--It's a red-haired setter dog with one black
ear! And he's sitting at the front gate this moment! Superintending
the unpacking of the furniture van! And I've named him Lopsy!"
"Why, Flame; how--absurd!" gasped her mother. In consideration of the
fact that Flame's mother had run all the way from the icy-footed
chicken yard to answer the telephone it shows distinctly what stuff
she was made of that she gasped nothing else.
And that Flame herself re-telephoned within the half hour to
acknowledge her absurdity shows equally distinctly what stuff _she_
was made of! It was from the summit of a crate of holly-wreaths that
she telephoned this time.
"Oh Mother-Funny," apologized Flame, "you were perfectly right. No lone
dog in the world could possibly manage a great spooky place like the
Rattle-Pane House. There are two other dogs with him! A great long, narrow
sofa-shaped dog upholstered in lemon and white,--something terribly
ferocious like 'Russian Wolf Hound' I think he is! But I've named him
Beautiful-Lovely! And there's the neatest looking paper-white coach dog
just perfectly ruined with ink-spots! Blunder-Blot, I think, will make a
good name for him! And--"
"Oh--Fl--ame!" panted her Mother. "Dogs--do--not--take houses!" It
was not from the 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.