"Who told you to look in there? Give that to me this minute! No—no—please put it back where you—where you found it!"
His momentary rage had already broken down in sobs, but he stood over me while I quickly did as he begged and replaced the carpet; then I tucked him up again, but for some time the bed shook under his anguish. I told him how sorry I was, again and yet again, and I suppose eventually my tone betrayed me.
"So you know who it is?" he asked, suddenly regarding me with dry bright eyes.
"I couldn't help seeing the likeness," I replied.
"It's my mother," he said unnecessarily.
His manner was curiously dogged and unlike him.
"And you keep her photograph under the floor?"
"Yes; you don't see many about, do you?" he inquired with precocious bitterness.
There was not one to be seen downstairs. That I knew from my glimpse of the photograph under the floor; there was nothing like it on any of the walls, nothing so beautiful, nothing with that rather wild, defiant expression which I saw again in Ronnie at this moment.
"But why under the floor?" I persisted, guessing vaguely though I did.