the boys used to leave a step-ladder
by her desk so that she could climb up and see how her top-knot really
looked. Nothing ruffled her spirits, and we soon quit teasing her and
began to admire her work. In addition to filling six columns of the
Saturday's paper with her society report in a town where a church social
is important enough to justify publishing the names of those who wait on
the tables, Miss Larrabee was a credit to the office.

[Illustration: As an office joke the boys used to leave a step-ladder by
her desk so that she could climb up and see how her top-knot really
looked]

She was always invited to the entertainments at the homes of the
Worthingtons and the Conklins, who had stationary wash-tubs in the
basements of their houses, and who ate dinner instead of supper in the
evening; and when she put on what the boys called her trotting harness,
her silk petticoats rustled louder than any others at the party. One day
she suddenly dropped her pompadour and appeared with her hair parted in
the middle and doused over her ears in long, undulating billows. No
other girl in town came within a quarter of an inch of Miss Larrabee's
dare. When straight-fronts became stylish, Miss Larrabee was a vertical
marvel, and when she rolled up her sleeves and organized a country club,
she referred to her shoes as boots and took the longest steps in town.
But with it all she was no mere clothes-horse. We drilled it into her
head during her first two weeks that "society" news in a country town
means not merely the doings of the cut-glass set, but that it means as
well the doings of the Happy Hoppers, the Trundle-Bed Trash, the Knights
of Columbus, the Rathbone Sisters, the King's Daughters, the Epworth
League, the Christian Endeavourers, the Woman's Relief Corps, the
Ladies' Aid and the Home Missionary Societies, Miss Nelson's Dancing
Class, the Switchmen's annual ball--if we get their job-work--and every
kindred, every tribe, except such as gather in what is known as "kitchen
sweats" and occasionally send in calls for the police. When Miss
Larrabee got this into her head she began to groan under her burden, and
by the end of the year, though she had great pride in her profession,
she affected to loathe her department.

Weddings were her especial abominations. When the first social cloud
appeared on the horizon indicating the approach of a series of showers
for the bride which would culminate in a cloudburst at some stone
c