e flowers must go or
'those present.' It's always best to print names." "Is the rest of it
all right?" asked Missy, crest-fallen.

"Well," returned Ed, with whom everything had gone wrong that day and
who was too hurried to remember the fluttering pinions of Youth, "I
guess it's printable, anyhow."

It was "printable," and it did come out in print--that was something!
For months the printed account of Mrs. Brooks's "bridge" was treasured
in the Merriam archives, to be brought out and passed among admiring
relatives. Yes, that was something! But, as habitude does inevitably
bring a certain staleness, so, as the pile of little clipped reports
grew bigger Missy's first prideful swell in them grew less.

Perhaps it would have been different had not the items always been,
perforce, so much the same.

There was so little chance to be "original"--one must use the same
little forms and phrases over and over again: "A large gathering
assembled on Monday night at the home of--" "Mrs. So-and-so, who has
been here visiting Mrs. What's-her-name, has returned--" One must crowd
as much as possible into as little space as possible. That was hard on
Missy, who loved words and what words could do. She wasn't allowed much
latitude with words even for "functions." "Function" itself had turned
out to be one of her most useful words since it got by Ed Martin and, at
the same time, lent the reported affair a certain distinguished air.

It was at a function--an ice-cream festival given by the Presbyterian
ladies on Mrs. Paul Bonner's lawn--that Missy met Archie Briggs.

She had experienced a curious, vague stir of emotions about going to the
Bonner home that evening; it was the first time she'd ever gone there
when Raymond Bonner wasn't present. Raymond was the handsomest and most
popular boy in her "crowd," and she used to be secretly pleased when he
openly admired her more than he did the other girls--indeed, there had
been certain almost sentimental passages between Raymond and Missy. Of
course all that happened before her horizon had "broadened"--before she
encountered a truly distinguished person like Ridgeley Holman Dobson.

Yet memories can linger to disturb, and Missy was accompanied by
memories that moonlit Wednesday evening when, in her "best" dress of
pale pink organdie, she carried her note-book to the Bonners' to report
the lawn-festival.

She had hesitated over the pink organdie; not many of the "crowd" were
going, and i