Peace On Earth Good Will To Dogs

PEACE ON EARTH GOOD WILL TO DOGS

PART I


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.