Melroy rose, laying down knife and pencil and taking his pipe out of his
mouth.
"Good afternoon," he greeted. "Dr. von Heydenreich gave me quite a
favorable account of you--as far as it went. He might have included a
few more data and made it more so.... Won't you sit down?"
The woman laid her handbag on the desk and took the visitor's chair,
impish mirth sparking in her eyes.
"He probably omitted mentioning that the D. is for Doris," she
suggested. "Suppose I'd been an Englishman with a name like Evelyn or
Vivian?"
Melroy tried to visualize her as a male Englishman named Vivian, gave
up, and grinned at her.
"Let this be a lesson," he said. "Inferences are to be drawn from
objects, or descriptions of objects; never from verbal labels. Do you
initial your first name just to see how people react when they meet
you?"
"Well, no, though that's an amusing and sometimes instructive
by-product. It started when I began contributing to some of the
professional journals. There's still a little of what used to be called
male sex-chauvinism among my colleagues, and some who would be favorably
impressed with an article signed D.
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