“How can she not be?” Bill wanted to know. “You’re not saying you believe in virgin births?”

“No, but I’d be interested to know why this Mrs. Tilbury does.”

“She writes a good letter,” said Larry. “Concise.”

“It’s concise because she’s foreign,” said Jean.

They all looked at her.

“No Englishwoman is taught handwriting like that. And ‘Gretchen’?”

“Well, clearly this is the sort of interview that is going to require some tact,” said Roy. “So obviously it’s going to have to be you, Jean.”

Around the table heads nodded. No one was going to fight her for this story.

“Anyway, the first thing is to go and check her out. I’m sure you’ll be able to tell pretty quickly if she’s a charlatan.”

“Give me five minutes alone with her—I’ll tell you if she’s a virgin,” said Larry, to general laughter. He leaned back in his chair, elbows out, hands behind his head, so that the gridlines of his vest were clearly visible against his shirt.

“She doesn’t say she’s still a virgin,” Bill pointed out. “This happened ten years ago. She may have seen some action since then.”

“I’m sure Jean can manage without your expertise,” said Roy, who didn’t like that sort of talk.

Jean had the feeling that if he wasn’t there, the conversation would rapidly turn coarse. It was curious the way the others moderated their language to suit Roy’s prudishness, while Jean herself was treated as “one of the boys.” She took this as a compliment, mostly. In darker moments, when she noticed the way they behaved around younger, prettier women—the secretaries, for example—with a heavy-handed mixture of flirtation and gallantry, she wasn’t so sure.

Jean divided the rest of the afternoon between her Household Hints column and Marriage Lines—a write-up of the previous week’s weddings.

After a reception at St. Paul’s Cray Community Center, Mr. and Mrs. Plornish left for their honeymoon at St. Leonard’s, the bride wearing a turquoise coat and black accessories . . .

Household Hints was a cinch because these were all supplied by loyal readers. In the early days Jean used to put some of these to the test before publication. Now, she took a certain pleasure in selecting the most outlandish.

That done, she wrote a brief note to Gretchen Tilbury, asking if she could come and meet her and her daughter. Since she had provided no telephone number, the arrangements would have to be conducted by letter. At five o’clock she covered her typewriter with its hood and left the building, dropping the letter off at the mailroom on her way out.

Jean’s bicycle, a solid, heavy-framed contraption that had come down, like most of her possessions, through generations of the Swinney family, was leaning against the railing. Standing in front of it, too much in the way to be ignored, was one of the typists locked in a deep embrace with a young man from the print room. Jean recognized the girl but didn’t know her name; there wasn’t much interplay between the reporters and the other departments on the paper.