How it opens
Your father was a scholar who had married a fortune and outlived it, and you were born in the smell of his books and the shadow of his debts.
Fanny was your sister, four years younger, and the only person in the house who was ever right without saying so.
Let the octagons ride, Fanny. The Homer stays, and the oven was my father's one sound idea.
FannyThe octagons are going today, Sidney, and the wagon man says they ride soft, and I have put the homer in the oven, and the oven is cold, and the homer is safe.
Choose
Save the Homer only, and let the rest ride.
Number the books yourself, and hand each one to the man, like a burial.
Sell them all, and keep the money against the winter, and be done with the dead.