The cuckoo stuck his head out of the old wall clock to announce that the hour of seven had arrived. But nobody in the Allen house that evening bothered to listen to him.
Tiny Mom Allen, in a rustling new housecoat, appeared unaware of even the wild litter of crumpled paper wrappings and ribbons that surrounded her. In her lap lay the iron box, and her fingers were already busy fitting together the bits of velvet with which she was lining it.
Pop was smoke-screening the room with a handsome new meerschaum that Richard Holt had brought him from Europe, and happily leafing through a huge new world atlas that had so far provided an answer for every question he could contrive.
Bert, resplendent in a British tweed sports coat, swung his new golf clubs one by one, in reckless arcs that threate
