“No,” said Sina.

“You might at least give it a try,” said Gladys.

“No,” said Sina. “I won’t have one of those things in the house.”

“You listen to it at the store,” said Gladys.

“That’s different,” said Sina.

“It’s a slippery slope,” said Old Tom, who had finally pushed away his burnt potatoes and begun eating cornflakes with the rest of us. “From radios to flush toilets to electricity. Then before you know it, you’re living life secondhand. You don’t talk to people face-to-face anymore because the people on the radio are so much more interesting. And you don’t play the piano and sing together of an evening ’cause you’ve got the radio to do it for you. And then suddenly you start to think that unless you’re sitting in that chair at six o’clock every night listening to the radio, you’re missing out on something. And someone starts to try to talk to you and you say, Shush, I’m listening to the radio. And soon you think you have to monitor all that stuff on the radio—the news, the music, the comedy shows, the talk shows. You think everyone else is monitoring it, too, and you know what? They are! They’re listening to this object and not to each other. No one is living together anymore in communities and villages and with their kith and kin and friends and enemies. No, they’re living in the vicinity of other people but not with them. They’re living with the radio. But they feel like something’s missing. And it is. Because the radio doesn’t know they’re there.”

“Oh, bunk,” said Gladys.

“It’s not bunk, it’s maybe a little overstated…” said Sina.

“Is not,” said Old Tom.

“But,” Sina interrupted him, rushing on, “I’ll tell you what isn’t bunk and that’s those radio waves. I don’t believe they can possibly be good for you. Why, some people who have gotten both electricity and radio have nothing but waves bombarding them, slicing through their mortal beings day and night. Banging around the inside of their house, maybe mangling their brain waves, interfering with things…”

“What things?” demanded Gladys.

“Well, we don’t know, do we?” said Old Tom. “With a science so young? Maybe the next generation will be born with three eyes. How’d you like that? Having a three-eyed baby?” Old Tom crossed his arms as if this settled things, and he and Sina nodded to each other across the table.

“Right,” said Gladys. “Well, it’s your funeral. I shall do my best, but don’t expect nothing in the future that ain’t burnt or ruined in some way because my back brain never got given a chance.”

“Don’t say ‘ain’t’ at my dinner table,” said Sina grumpily. “Not in front of the children.”

“You’re not very nice employers,” Gladys said. “You’re not very nice people. And I like saying ‘ain’t.’”

“We’re perfectly nice people,” said Sina. “We just don’t like radios. Or sloppy speech.”

And then, although the weather had been fine all day, there was a terrific clap of thunder and the windows blackened and the wind roared in off the ocean. Old Tom and Sina got up and ran out to get all the animals inside their stalls.