“Through the softly-parted portieres which separate Mrs. J. Barton Brooks's back-parlour from the dining room came a gracious emanation of scent and colour. I stopped for a moment in the doorway, and saw, abloom there before me, a magical maze of flowers. Flowers! Oh, multifold fragrance and tints divine which so ineffably enrich our lives! Does anyone know whence they come? Those fragile fairy creatures whose housetop is the sky; wakened by golden dawn; for whom the silver moon sings lullaby. Yes; sunlight it is, and blue sky and green earth, that endow them with their mysterious beauty; these, and the haze of rain that filters down when clouds rear their sullen heads. Sun and sky, and earth and rain; they alone may know--know the secrets of these fairy-folk who, from their slyly-opened petals, watch us at our hurrying business of life... We, mere humans, can never know. With us it must suffice to sweeten our hearts with the memory of fragrant flowers.” She was proud of that opening paragraph. But Ed Martin blue-pencilled it. “Short of space this week,” he said. “Either the 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.