Page "editorial" Paragraph 297

She's been in and out of my house for a dozen years now, although she's still a teen-ager who looks like a baby, she is getting married.

Her mother, now dead, was my good friend and when she came to tell us about her plans and to show off her ring I had a sobering wish to say something meaningful to her, something her mother would wish said.

For a while there was such shrill girlish commotion I couldn't have made myself heard if I'd had the equivalent of the message to Garcia.

But when some of the squeals had subsided and she had been through one of those sessions that are so indispensable to the young female -- six girls sprawled on one bed, drinking Cokes and giggling -- she came back to the kitchen to talk with me a minute.