ly a quarter of an hour before the first wave of our pent-up
enthusiasm had spent itself. After a positive debauch of
self-congratulation, amicable bickering with regard to the precise
order of precedence in which an antiquary would place our acquisitions,
and breathless speculation concerning their true worth, we sank into
sitting postures about the room and smiled affectionately upon one
another.

"And now," said Berry, "what about tying them up?"

"What for?" said Jill.

"Well, you can't send them through the post as they are."

"You don't imagine," said Daphne, in the horrified tone of one who
repeats a blasphemy, "you don't imagine that we're going to give these
things away?"

Berry looked round wildly.

"D'you mean to say you're going to keep them?" he cried.

"Of course we are," said his wife.

"What, all of them?"

My sister nodded.

"Every single one," she said.

With an unearthly shriek, Berry lay back in his chair and drummed with
his heels upon the floor.

"I can't bear it!" he roared. "I can't bear it! I won't. It's
insufferable. I've parted with the savings of a lifetime for a whole
roomful of luxuries, not one of which, in the ordinary way, we should
have dreamed of purchasing, not one of which we require, to not one of
which, had you seen it in a shop, you would have given a second
thought, all of which are probably spurious----"

"Shame!" cried Jill.

"----only to be told that I've still got to prosecute the mutually
revolting acquaintance with infuriated shopkeepers forced upon me this
morning. It's cruelty to animals, and I shall write to the Y.M.C.A.
Besides, it's more blessed----"

"I can't help it," said Daphne. "The man had absolutely nothing that
would have done for anybody. If----"

"One second," said her husband. "I haven't parsed that sentence yet.
And what d'you mean by 'done for'? Because----"

"If," Daphne continued doggedly, "we sent one of those rugs to someone
for Christmas, they'd think we'd gone mad."

Berry sighed.

"I'm not sure we haven't," he said. "Any way--" he nodded at Jonah and
myself--"I'll trouble each of you gents for a cheque for sixty pounds.
As it is, I shall have to give up paying my tailor again, and what with
Lent coming on..." Wearily he rose to his feet. "And now I'm going to
have a good healthy cry. Globules the size of pigeons' eggs will well
from my orbs."

"I know," said Jill. "These things can be our Christmas presents