One of the secretaries in our sister department, with which we share one floor of our building, is a flaming spinster. Neurotic, intelligent, and articulate, she loves to banter with me. Quintessentially English, she is incapable of intimacy, but on occasion she spouts things that people anyplace would prefer not to divulge. This morning she stopped me in the corridor and made a motion as though she was checking her wristwatch. “I love to do this to anyone who comes late to work,” she winked mischievously, having apparently just done it to someone. “Of course,” she continued in her high-pitched voice, “later on you learn that the person’s wife had just died, but that they had still made it to work only twenty minutes late!” As she was departing, her head raised high, she whispered her punch line: “But I still love needling them for arriving late!”