She saw at once that nothing had happened to the books. Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi, the title running catercornered in gold across its narrow green spine, was in exactly the same place as ever, next to Tennyson’s Poetical Works, Illustrated, and that next to Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner. She ran her finger in a loving track across Eric Brighteyes and Jane Eyre, The Last Days of Pompeii and Carry On, Jeeves. Shoulder to shoulder, they had long since made their own family. For every book here she had heard their voices, father’s and mother’s. And perhaps it didn’t matter
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