oted Miss Persnickety

ome time ago Baron Von Lodge was the head of a small country near Switzerland known as Lilliland.

Lady Angela of Alpine Castle liked to attend the meetings of the Lilliland Women’s Club that were held in a large white house used exclusively by the club. The house had been donated by a wealthy widow many years earlier to help acknowledge the fine work of the women of Lilliland in their many philanthropic and charitable activities. “Lilliland is a better place because of the work of the women’s club,” said the Baron and Professor Hamblin.

Lady Angela noted something about the club that she at first ignored, but then it began to bother her. It was the seemingly innocent lack of fairness to all. The women selected and voted for a person each year to be “Miss Persnickety.” The title, according to the way the people in the women’s club used it, was not complimentary. While it generally meant a hard working person who paid special attention to details, in this sense it meant something more like an unpopular busybody.

Lady Angela found out that Jane Parsons had been voted Miss Persnickety. When Jane found out about the dubious distinction, she came crying to Lady Angela and said that she felt she should resign from the women’s club.

Lady Angela thought that this was important enough to consult with the Baron and Professor Hamblin.

Professor Hamblin told a secret to Lady Angela that seemed to make the problem worse. The woman who donated the white house to the women’s club was the great-grandmother of Jane Parsons. If Jane resigned, the house would revert back to the estate of Great-grandmother Parsons, and be sold.

This was too confidential a matter. Lady Angela had a plan that might fix everything by cleverly eliminate the Miss Persnickety award. The next time there was an election, Lady Angela would ask her close friends to politely abstain from voting. With the majority of abstentions, a motion could be made and passed to eliminate the Miss Persnickety election.

The plan worked and Jane Parsons was very pleased and the white house was preserved as the official home of the Women’s Club of Lilliland.