George is a cranky dictator, and it takes her all her time to keep in touch with him. I have watched her at it. Sometimes he stops and can't for the life of him find the right word, and I can tell by her eyes that she knows it, and is too polite to give it him; just the way one longs to help out a stutterer. But I have seen her put the word down out of her own head long before George has shouted it at her, as he does in the end. She picks and chooses, too, a little, for George is a tidy swearer, as the cabman said. I suppose he learned it in the high society he goes among! He does it all the time he is composing; it relieves the tension, he says, and she doesn't mind. She manages him. George pretends he knows he is being managed, which shows that he doesn't really think he is. I asked her once why she didn't marry, but she said the profession of typewriting was not so binding as the other, for you could get down off your high stool if you wanted. Christina always says rude things about epigrams and marriage. She is not very old, only thirty; but she says she has outgrown them both. Of course in this house epigrams are the same as bread-and-butter, hers and ours, for George pays her a good salary for typing those that he makes ready for print. As for epigrams, she says she can make them herself, and here are some I found written out in her handwriting on a china memorandum tablet. I expect she keeps a separate tablet for her remarks on Marriage. 1. Man cannot live by epigram alone. 2. Epigrams are like the paper-streamers they fling out of the boxes at a _bal masqué_ at the Opera. They flat fall immediately afterwards. 3. An epigram is like the deadly Upas Tree, and blights everything in the shape of conversation that grows near it. 4. Reverse an epigram and you get a platitude. 5. The savage, sour, and friendless epigram. The last sounds to me all wrong, for it has no verb. But I give it as I find it. George's new novel is to be called _The Senior Epigrammatist_, and the scene is laid in the Smart Sea Islands. "Our well-known blend," said Mr. Aix, "of opaline sea and crystal epigram knocks the public every time! But mark me, Christina dear, this sunlight soap won't wash clothes. It isn't for home consumption. It gladdens publishers' offices, but leaves the domestic hearth cold. The fires of passion----" "Don't talk to me of passion," said Christina. "I just detest the word. Passion is piggish! It's a perfect disgrace to have primitive instincts, and I wouldn't be seen dead with a temperament, in these days." She was putting a new ribbon into her typewriter and trying it. She typed something like this-- Christina x x x Ball x x C.B. x x (----) C. Ball B B---- "Who is Ball?" said Mr. Aix anxiously. Christina answered as if she meant to bite his head off. "A man who never made an epigram in his life, and stands six foot six in his shoes." "The noble savage, eh? Well, well, I wish him luck!"