VERA PARSLEY

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     Vera denied the fact she would be 50 in two months, even to herself. So good was her deception she now firmly believed she was 39. Goodness, she thought, I'll soon be 40 -- who'd have believed it? She smiled and slipped a white cotton glove onto her white, porcelain hand.
     She pursed her lips, clicked her tongue, drummed her fingers. Vera Parsley waited.
     In 28 years (or 17) Vera Parsley liked to think she had become indispensible. In an ideal world, of course -- a DE Stevenson novel, perhaps -- there would be no requirement for her to work. While she waited, however, she needed a modest occupation and the post of Curator of the village museum was ideal.
     She had started as a Saturday assistant. Quite unsuited to the rough and tumble of organizing children's activities, she progressed to indexing back copies of the Westamperland Gazette, from which she took vicarious delight in the intrigues of the weekly criminal courts. Such goings on, she thought, and in Westamperland too.     NEXT
   

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