hurch, Miss Larrabee would begin to rumble like distant thunder and, as
the storm grew thicker, she would flash out crooked chain-lightning
imprecations on the heads of the young people, their fathers and mothers
and uncles and aunts. By the day of the wedding she would be rolling a
steady diapason of polite, decolourised, expurgated, ladylike profanity.

While she sat at her desk writing the stereotyped account of the event,
it was like picking up a live wire to speak to her. As she wrote, we
could tell at just what stage she had arrived in her copy. Thus, if she
said to the adjacent atmosphere, "What a whopper!" we knew that she had
written, "The crowning glory of a happy fortnight of social gatherings
found its place when----" and when she hissed out, "Mortgaged clear to
the eaves and full of installment furniture!" we felt that she had
reached a point something like this: "After the ceremony the gay party
assembled at the palatial home." In a moment she would snarl: "I am dead
tired of seeing Mrs. Merriman's sprawly old fern and the Bosworth palm.
I wish they would stop lending them!" and then we realised that she had
reached the part of her write-up which said: "The chancel rail was
banked with a profusion of palms and ferns and rare tropical plants."
She always groaned when she came to the "simple and impressive ring
ceremony." When she wrote:

"The distinguished company came forward to offer congratulations to the
newly-wedded pair," she would say as she sharpened her pencil-point:
"There's nothing like a wedding to reveal what a raft of common kin
people have," and we knew that it was all over and that she was closing
the article with: "A dazzling array of costly and beautiful presents was
exhibited in the library," for then she would pick up her copy, dog-ear
the sheets, and jab them on the hook as she sighed: "Another great
American pickle-dish exhibit ended."

In the way she did two things Miss Larrabee excited the wonder and
admiration of the office. One was the way that she kept tab on brides.
We heard through her of the brides who could cook, and of those who were
beginning life by accumulating a bright little pile of tin cans in the
alley. She knew the brides who could do their own sewing and those who
could not. She had the single girl's sniff at the bride who wore her
trousseau season after season, made over and fixed up, and she gave the
office the benefit of her opinion of the husband in the case who