Explore "A Reaping" by E.F. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Helen and I have a failing, though you may not have thought that such a thing was possible. It is a foolish weakness for old bits of rubbish. We can neither of us without anguish and unutterable rendings bear to throw old and useless things away. The weakness has to be got over sometimes, but we keep putting the work of destruction off, just as one puts off a visit to the dentist, with the result that when it comes to pass we find that it would have been far better to have done it long ago. However, if we did not occasionally tear things up, and throw things away, the house would become uninhabitable, so this morning we vowed to each other to spend the hours till lunch in the work of destruction. Our rubbish collects chiefly in the room that is called mine, where she has a knee-hole table with nine drawers. She opened these one after the other. They were all full, and despair seized her.
‘I can't,' she said. ‘Here are nine drawers all quite full of heart's blood. O Jack, look!'