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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does the wife worry the people from the city might come to their home and do some day?
(a) Kidnap their maid and gardener.
(b) Go for a swim in their beautiful pool.
(c) Tear off the plaque and stream in.
(d) Throw bombs and destroy all they have.

2. What game did the little boy like to play after they installed a speaker at the gates of their home?
(a) Tag.
(b) Telephone.
(c) Hide and seek.
(d) Cops and robbers.

3. What does the narrator do when she is unable to go back to sleep?
(a) She writes a letter.
(b) She reads a book.
(c) She tells herself a story.
(d) She eats a sandwich.

4. How are the people in the narrator's story said to be living at the start of her tale?
(a) Carefree and fancy free.
(b) In eternal despair.
(c) Happily ever after.
(d) Like peas in a pod.

5. Who is said to have offered a warning to the man and woman when they started their life together?
(a) The neighbors.
(b) The town councilor.
(c) The man's mother.
(d) The woman's father.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the man tell his wife to ease her fears the people from the city will come to their house in the suburbs?

2. What did thieves do to "somebody's trusted housemaid" (26) after the city riots were suppressed?

3. What reason does the narrator give for the casual laborer murdering an old widower?

4. What does the husband do to assuage his wife's fears that people from the city might intrude on their home in the suburbs?

5. What is the man's mother called in the narrator's tale?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the husband try to assuage his wife's fears when she worries people from the cities will tear off their warning sign and "open the gates and stream in" (26).

2. What recent crimes does the narrator describe at the start of the story?

3. Despite having the same fears of intruders as other people, what precautions does the narrator say she does not take in her home?

4. Describe the sign the man and woman received from the Neighborhood watch. How was it supposed to "prove the property owner was no racist" (25)?

5. At the start of "Once Upon a Time," what does the narrator say someone wrote and asked her to do, and how does she feel about this request?

6. What does the narrator do when she is an able to fall back to sleep at the start of the story?

7. What does the narrator realize is the cause of the creaking she hears in her home at the start of the story?

8. Why is the narrator unable to sleep at the start of the story?

9. How is the man's mother described and what warning did she give her son and his wife as they start their life together?

10. What were the man and woman unable to insure their house against, and why did the man tell his wife they need not worry about that?

(see the answer keys)

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