Jane took her feet off a patio chair and helped Missy put down her belongings. Missy collapsed in the vacated chair. "Coffee?" Jane asked.

“No, thanks. These are your assignments for class. Yours and your mother's copies. I notice that you didn't turn anything in, Jane.”

Jane explained to Shelley, "We were supposed to write a first chapter to be copied to the rest of the class before the first meeting. We're all supposed to read and critique each other's."

“I think you can learn a lot about your own writing by studying the flaws and virtues in other people's," Missy said. "So why don't I have anything from you, Jane?"

“Missy, I'm not really taking the class; just paying for it so I can go with my mother. What are these two books? Don't tell me somebody already wrote a whole book?"

“Exactly. It's a self-published autobiography of Agnes Pryce."

“Agnes Pryce is in this class!" Jane groaned. Seeing Shelley's puzzled expression, she said, "Shelley, you know who she is—that terrible old woman who's always writing letters to the editor and trying to start petitions—Mrs. General Pryce."

“Oh! Mrs. General. Of course. She's the hateful one who's forever pestering the city council and the school board to impose a full-time eight-o'clock curfew for everybody under twenty-one. Anybody who objects is made to look like a neglectful parent who really wants their children out drinking and having sex all night," Shelley said. "She's a first-class bitch."

“She's a career military wife who really gets into the concept of martial law," Jane said to Missy. "And she hates kids."

“That's obvious from her book. Actually, I think she hates everybody—except herself," Missy said. "The whole thing is one long, masturbatory—is that a word?—account of her making everybody she’s ever run across do the right thing whether they want to or not. Right according to her, naturally."