"No, dear, not yet."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe
tonight, after you d seen them--"
"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things."
Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded
volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.
Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were
touching a rotting corpse.
"Old," he mused, "--so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being
wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a
hundred years ago."
A sudden frown contorted his dark features.
_Tick-de-tock, tick-de-tock_, said the antique clock.
"A hundred years old," he repeated. His mouth became a hard, thin line.
"Edith, I think I know why Ronnie wanted to read, why he fell into the
trap so easily."
"What do you mean, David?"
Dad nodded at the clock, and the slow, smouldering anger returned to
his face. "It's _your_ fault, Edith. You've always liked old things.
That clock of your great-great-grandmother's. Those old prints on the
wall. That stamp collection you started for Ronnie--stamps dated way
back to the 1940's."