The Five Orange Pips

On the fourth day after the new year I heard my father give a sharp cry of surprise as we sat together at the breakfast- table. There he was, sitting with a newly opened envelope in one hand and five dried orange pips in the outsstretched palm of the other one. He had always laughed at what he called my cock- and- bull story about the colonel, but he looked very scarede and puzzled now that the same thing had come upon himself.