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 "Your cook's clever," said Ruth. "She's marked the places to cut, with icing, so you can make all the pieces even."

"I think it was foolish of her," said Martin, "because Bunny is quite a small child still; if she has too much chocolate she comes out in spots."

Bunny and Joyce, at the other end of the table, looked at each other fleetingly, in a tacit alliance of juniority. Joyce was also seven, a dark little elf, rather silent.

"Why don't you blow out the candles?" shrilled Bunny.

This effectively altered the topic. After the sudden hurricane had ceased, Martin began to cut, obediently following the white spokes of sugar.

"I wonder what it feels like to be grown up?" said Alec.

"I guess we'll know if we wait long enough," said Phyllis.

"How old do you have to be, to be grown up?" asked Ruth.

"A man's grown up when he's twenty-one," Ben stated firmly.

"Is Daddy twenty-one?" said Bunny.

Cries of scorn answered this. "Of course he is," said Martin. "Daddy's middle-age, he's