“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.