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"I must have been asked to leave at least four schools when my Aunt Lorraine McQueen came home

"It was the first tih she had been home several times when I was a baby, and told rant lipstick kisses and proffering of the ave to e fancy white box

"Her room was the same as it is now, in location, and I have noit until I was taken in to see her on that long-ago day and she put me on her lap

"Even counting the guests who had passed through Blackwood Manor, Aunt Queen was the prettiest of the women I'd ever beheld Her spike-heel ankle-strap shoes struck lamorous is my word now, and I very much enjoyed her heavy perfume and the feel of her soft white hair

"I calculate

she must have been near seventy around that tirand nephew, or Sweetheart, and both of them were in their fifties, I think

"Aunt Queen was dressed all in tailored white silk, which was her favorite style of dressing, and I remember I dripped some of the chocolate-covered cherry candy on her suit, and she said airily that I mustn't worry, she had a thousand suits of white silk, and she laughed in the htful manner and told me I was as 'brilliant' as she had once predicted I would be

"Her roo the canopy of the bed, and long gossah-waisted white ruffle curtains on her s, and she even had a white fox fur with real heads and tails, which she had tossed over a chair

"She told s to be done in white, and showed ernails, which were lacquered in white, and the cameo at the neck of her blouse, which hite on pale pink coral, and said that she had needed all things to be white for the last thirty years, or ever since John McQueen, her husband, had died

" 'I think I a tired of it,' she declared in themanner 'I did so love your Uncle John McQueen I never loved a ain But I'm ready to be drenched in color Surely your Uncle John McQueen would approve What do you think, Tarquin? Should I buy suits of different colors?¡¯

"It was a positive land life when she spoke these words No one had ever asked me such a serious adult question before In fact, she spoke to me entirely as if I were an adult I adored her from those moments forith a loyalty that has no limit

"Within a week she was showinght was the happiest and the sweetest color, and I had to confess, of all things, that yellow seemed to me to be the happiest, and I took her hand and led her to the kitchen to see the yellow curtains there, which h and say that yellow made her think of butter

"But she did the rooht summery fabric, airy like the white she had used before, but the whole rooical in yellow, and frankly I never liked it as e

"Over the years, she has done the roos, draperies and chairs, and as for her clothes, she has done the sa But on that first day, she seee of pure whiteness, and I re in her beauty and what seemed the purity of her manner and her words

"As for the cameo, she toldup a cup for Zeus, the king of the gods, as in the for his beak to drink