“So let’s just get it out of sight before Mom comes home,” Pop said. “Then you boys can take it down to him first thing in the morning.”
“How’s this?” Bert asked, dumping an assortment of Christmas seals out of a shoe box. “You can put it in here.”
When the little box was inside, he snapped a rubber band around the cardboard container and scrawled on the cover “Mom—Don’t peek!”
“And we’ll leave it right here,” Bert said, placing it in full sight on the sideboard.
“What’s the idea?” Richard Holt wanted to know.
Pop grinned. “Just teasing her.”
“She’ll try to wheedle a hint out of us—without ever asking a direct question,” Bert said.
“But she won’t look inside,” Sandy added.
“Sounds like some form of torture to me,” Ken’s father said.
“It is,” Sandy admitted, grinning. “But it’s an old Allen custom—only usually we’re on the receiving end.”