Biographical note -- Foreword : "I think I know her " / by Ruth Franklin -- Sudden and unusual things have happened: unpublished and uncollected short fiction. Paranoia ; Still life with teapot and students ; The Arabian nights ; Mrs. Spencer and the Oberons ; It isn't the money I mind ; Company for dinner ; I cannot sing the old songs ; The new maid ; French is the mark of a lady ; Gaudeamus igitur ; The lie ; She says the damnedest things ; Remembrance of things past ; Let me tell you ; Bulletin ; Family treasures ; Showdown ; The trouble with my husband ; Six A.M. is the hour ; Root of evil ; The bridge game ; The man in the woods -- I would rather write than do anything else: essays and reviews. Autobiographical musings ; A garland of garlands ; Hex me, daddy, eight to the bar ; Clowns ; A vroom for Dr. Seuss ; Notes on an unfashionable novelist ; Private showing ; Good old house ; The play's the thing ; The ghosts of Loiret ; "Well?" -- When this war is over: early short stories. The sorcerer's apprentice ; Period piece ; 4-F party ; The paradise ; Homecoming ; Daughter, come home ; As high as the sky ; Murder on Miss Lederer's birthday -- Somehow things haven't turned out quite the way we expected: humor and family. Here I am, washing dishes again ; In praise of dinner table silence ; Questions I wish I'd never asked ; Mother, honestly! ; How to enjoy a family quarrel ; The pleasures and perils of dining out with children ; Out of the mouths of babes ; The real me ; On girls of thirteen ; What I want to know is, what do other people cook with? -- I'd like to see you get out of that sentence: lectures about the craft of writing. About the end of the world ; Memory and delusion ; On fans and fan mail ; How I write fiction ; Garlic in fiction -- Afterword.