The Trip To The Museum, parts 1418 - 1421

1418. She was very content with her assumption that the secret dark paintings were of a special religious nature. In her mind she connected whatever was in that room with the ceremonies of the church, like confirmation, or confession, where things were covered with embroidered cloth, taken out of special compartments, hidden away in ornamental decorated boxes and talked about with a special language nobody could understand.

1419. But her pleasant notion about the holy room of dark paintings was contradicted by the other children on the bus returning to school, who, it turned out, were engrossed in a conversation about the every same subject. All the children had their theories about what it contained. The most popular notion was that all the things in the locked room were especially expensive and therefore apt to be stolen by thieves. 

1420. Others thought the paintings in the room were very fragile, old and falling apart and so could only be looked at once in a while. This produced the discussion of the question: could looking at art things wear them out? Everyone thought this unlikely, but one boy said he knew for a fact looking at things wore them out and you could tell because very old things get worn down on the edges, and this is because they have been looked at too much.

1421. It turned out that there was one student who had accurate definite knowledge about the paintings in the locked room. All along he said nothing, saving up what he had to say for the best possible dramatic moment. In the middle of the argument about if looking at things wore them out he made his pronouncement. "I've been in the locked room," he said. "I went in there with my Mom; it contains paintings of naked ladies."