The Dreadful Defiance of Deirdre Dashpebble

Deirdre Dashpebble was regarded as a woman who knew her own mind. Indeed, it had always been thus, from the first moment that Deirdre, as a small but extremely forceful child, had begun to think her own thoughts. She had been, from the days of her girlhood onward, a compelling figure of unyielding defiance, an unusually strong-minded person who unreservedly refused, come hell or high water, to consider doing anything that others might want her to do.

Deirdre never wavered in her defiance, and woe betide any fool who tried to get around her. She was in the firm habit, thoroughly fixed through long practice, of doing only what she herself chose to do. Her powers of defiance were formidable and fearsome, almost inhuman, having been willfully honed to a dreadful sharpness over many years. More than a few times, she had reduced those who dealt with her to copious tears of hopeless despair.

She was rarely heard to say "Yes," or even "Maybe," to anything, and no one possessed the amount of raw courage that would have been necessary to challenge the perverse integrity of her steadfastly negative stand. The path of her life was littered with the broken souls of all the heedless blockheads who had ill-advisedly attempted, and utterly failed, to thwart her in pursuing the relentless policy of hardheaded refusal that defined her determined character.

Deirdre was unshakable in her ability to prevail in every situation, to avoid agreeing to any course of action that did not please her. She had no husband, and, because she could draw upon an enormous fortune that she had gained as a result of being an exceedingly ruthless player in the game of high finance, had no particular need for one. She could afford to do only as she wished, at all times and in all instances, answering to no one but herself.

One day, a person who was not familiar with Deirdre's reputation for adamant refusal happened to make a small request of her, to which Deirdre, after briefly pausing to reflect, responded, "Yes." No one who heard of Deirdre's answer could believe it. When she was asked why she had finally voiced an answer in the affirmative, after a lifetime of doing otherwise, she gave an inscrutable smile and replied, "Because I was tired of saying 'No' to everything."

Deirdre Dashpebble, having astonished everyone by offering assent on that one occasion, never did so again. Thereafter, she elected to withdraw completely from public view and kept entirely to herself, living alone and saying not a single word to anyone. She passed her solitary days happily and busily, engaging in many hours of quiet handiwork, carefully depicting the most famous moments in the history of the world by means of intricate embroidery.