Dad groaned. "Three of them. Did you burn them?"
"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.