Alfrida, for so long an admired, urbane exponent of big-city living to her young rurally isolated niece, has lost some of her gloss by the time she accepts a university place in the same city as her aunt.

Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was originally published in the collectionHateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.

Alice Munro was born in 1931 and is the author of twelve collections of stories, most recentlyToo Much Happiness, and a novel,Lives of Girls and Women. She has received many awards and prizes, including three of Canada's Governor General's Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes, the Rea Award for the Short Story, the Lannan Literary Award, the WHSmith Book Award in the UK, the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize forThe Beggar Maid, and has been awarded the Man Booker International Prize 2009 for her overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. Her stories have appeared in theNew Yorker,Atlantic Monthly,Paris Reviewand other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. She lives with her husband in Clinton, Ontario, near Lake Huron in Canada.