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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 did the old widower who was murdered have to protect him?
(a) Guns.
(b) An electronic alarm system.
(c) Security guards.
(d) Fierce dogs.

2. Who lives in the home the narrator describes at the start of her story?
(a) A man, and a woman and their son.
(b) A single mother and her child.
(c) An old woman and her adult son.
(d) A father and his son.

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

4. Where did the man and woman get the plaque that said "YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED" (25) when they first began their life together?
(a) The Neighborhood Watch.
(b) A local gift-shop.
(c) The man's mother.
(d) The woman's father.

5. What adjective is used to describe the housemaid in the narrator's tale?
(a) Itinerant.
(b) Trustworthy.
(c) Eccentric.
(d) Loquacious.

Short Answer Questions

1. What are the man and woman warned against doing as they start their lives together?

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

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

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

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

Short Essay Questions

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

2. 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?

3. What fears did the man and woman's trusted housemaid begin to have, and what did they do in response to her fears?

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

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

6. 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?

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

8. After the riots outside the city subsided, what crimes took place in the suburbs?

9. What does the man have installed in their house to ease his wife's fears and what does the boy do with them?

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

(see the answer keys)

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