shoulders.

“A rock, Mother. This morning, early. Fooling around....”

“I thought, young man, you were old enough to know better than to toss rocks around carelessly.”

Biff heaved a sigh of relief. He was going to get out of this easily. Neither he nor his father wanted to tell Mrs. Brewster the real reason for the hole in the screen. They didn’t want to worry her.

“Now,” Mrs. Brewster said briskly, “we’ve lots to do today. We’ll have no time in the morning. We’ll have to leave for the airport early. Now here’s what I want you to do, Biff....”

On the morning of his departure, Biff again woke early. He could hear noises throughout the house and sniffed at the friendly smells of breakfast being prepared. Everybody was up. They were all going with him to the airport. Biff looked at his watch. It was nearly seven by the time he was dressed. In one hour and fifteen minutes he would be air-borne, on his way to Chicago, the first leg in a journey that would take him halfway around the world.

Breakfast was a funny kind of a meal that morning—not the food, but the way the whole family acted. The twins, of course, kept up a steady, excited chatter. Any trip to the airport made them bubble like a bottle of pop. But Biff and his mother and father either all tried to talk at the same time, or suddenly remained silent at the same time.

“Biff gets all the breaks,” Ted complained. “Don’t see why I can’t go, too.”

“Because you’re too young, that’s why,” retorted his twin sister, Monica. “You’re just eleven.”

“You are, too,” the younger boy shot back. “Way you act, anybody’d think you were older’n me.”

“Your time will come, Ted,” Mr. Brewster said, acting as a peacemaker between his youngest children. “When you’re five years older, like Biff, the world will still be here. There’ll be plenty of chances for you to spread your wings and fly.”

“Right,” said Ted emphatically. “And I’ll go by rocket.”

“But what about me? I’m a girl,” Monica wailed.

“Yes, Tom. Answer that one,” Martha Brewster said with a laugh. “Don’t worry, Monica,” she continued, “we women will show these men a thing or two.”

“Like what?” the girl 

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