Edgar's Little Saw

On a frost-laced Christmas morning, the parlor smells of pine and possibility; Edgar, tousle-haired and bright-eyed, unwraps a lacquered tool chest whose brass latch snaps open to reveal—among screwdrivers and gimlets—a toy saw no longer than a spaniel’s tail, its teeth glinting like a row of infant sharks. While he struts next door to flaunt skates and horns, cherubic Charlie—dimpled death in a sailor suit—discovers the blade’s latent appetite. Chair legs fall like felled saplings; Mother’s Sunday hat is halved into calico moons; the cat, tail bottle-brushed, escapes with only a whisker deficit. Edgar returns to a domestic battlefield of splinters and shredded dignity, is condemned without trial, and is banished from the candle-lit doorway of his sweetheart’s party. Only at the eleventh chime does Charlie’s tearful confession spill, turning parental wrath into teary embraces, restoring Edgar’s tarnished halo just in time for leftover pudding and a waltz beneath paper garlands.