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(A HOUSE ON THE PLAINS)

MAMA SAID I WAS THENCEFORTH TO BE HER NEPHEW, and to call her Aunt Dora. She said our fortune depended on her not having a son as old as eighteen who looked more like twenty. Say Aunt Dora, she said. I said it. She was not satisfied. She made me say it several times. She said I must say it believing she had taken me in since the death of her widowed brother, Horace. I said, I didn’t know you had a brother named Horace. Of couse I don’t, she said with an amused glance at me. But it must be a good story if I could fool his son with it…

* Editorial: Random House