Little Miss Grouch

Little Miss Grouch is a Book of Literature. The Book tells that the Several tugs were persuasively nudging the Clan Macgregor out from her pier. Beside the towering flanks of the sea monster, newest and biggest of her species, they seemed absurdly inadequate to the job. But they made up for their insignificance by self important and fussy puffings and pipings, while, like an elephant harried by terriers, the vast mass slowly swung outward toward the open. From the pier there arose a composite clamor of farewell. The Tyro gazed down upon this lively scene with a feeling of loneliness. No portion of the ceremonial of parting appertained personally to him. He had had his fair fraction in the form of a crowd of enthusiastic friends who came to see him off on his maiden voyage. They, however, retired early, acting as escort to his tearful mother and sister who had given way to uncontrollable grief early in the proceedings, on a theory held, I believe, by the generality of womankind in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary, that a first time voyager seldom if ever comes back alive. Lacking individual attention, the Tyro decided to appropriate a share of the communal. Therefore he bowed and waved indiscriminately, and was distinctly cheered up by a point blank smile and handkerchief flutter from a piquant brunette who liked his looks. Most people liked his looks, particularly women. In the foreground of the dock was an individual who apparently didn't. He was a fashionable and frantic oldish young man, who had burst through the barrier and now jigged upon the pier head in a manner not countenanced by the Society for Standardizing Ballroom Dances. At intervals he made gestures toward the Tyro as if striving, against unfair odds of distance, to sweep him from the surface of creation.