Let the pins go, unless one lies on the sidewalk point toward you, and let this be the story of Mae Munroe, herself one of the pink-cheeked grenadiers of that great army whose destiny is as vague as the destiny of pins, and who in more than one vain attempt to climb had snagged her imitation French embroidery petticoats on the outward side of that barbed-wire fence.
Then, too, in the years that lead up to this moment Mae Munroe had taken on weight—the fair, flabby flesh of lack of exercise and no lack of chocolate bonbons. And a miss is as good as a mile, or a barbed-wire fence, only so long as she keeps her figure down and her diet up. When Mae Munroe ran for a street-car she breathed through her mouth for the first six blocks after she caught it. The top button of her shoe was no longer equal to the span. But her eyes were still blue, rather like sky when you look straight up; her hair yellow to the roots; and who can gainsay that a dimple in the chin is not worth two in the cheeks?
In the florid disorder of a red velvet sitting-room cluttered with morning sunshine and unframed, unsigned photographs of stage favorites, empty bottles and dented-in cushions, Mae Munroe stirred on her high mound of red sateen sofa-pillows; placed her paper-bound book face down on the tabouret beside her; yawned; made a foray into an uncovered box of chocolate bonbons; sank her small teeth into a creamy oozing heart and dropped a particle of the sweet into the sniffling, upturned snout of a white wool dog cuddled in the curve of her arm; yawned again.
"No more tandy! Make ittsie Snookie Ookie sick! Make muvver's ittsie bittsie bow-wow sick! No! No!"
Each admonition she accompanied with a slight pat designed to intimidate further display of appetite. The small bunch in her arms raised his head and regarded her with pink, sick little eyes, his tongue darting this way and that in an aftermath of relish; then fell to licking her bare forearm with swift, dry strokes.
"Muvver's ittsie bittsie Snookie! Him love him poor muvver! Him poor, poor muvver!"
A cold tear oozed through one of Miss Munroe's closed eyes, zigzagged down her face, and she laid her cheek pat against the white wool.
"Muvver just wishes she was dead, Snookie. God! don't she just!"
An hour she lay so. The morning sunshine receded, leaving a certain grayness in the cluttered room. From the rear of the flat came the clatter of dishes and the harsh sing of water plunging from a faucet. The book slid from its incline on the pillow to the floor and lay with its leaves crumpled under. The dog fell to snoring. Another while ticked past—loudly. And as if the ticking were against her brain like drops of water, she rose to a half-sitting posture, reached for the small onyx clock on the mantelpiece and smothered it beneath one of the red sateen sofa-pillows. When she relaxed again two fresh tears waggled heavily down her cream-colored cheeks. Then for a while she slept, with her mouth ever so slightly open and revealing the white line of her teeth. The tears slid off her cheeks to the mussed frills of her negligée and dried there.
The little dog emerged from his sleep gaping and stretching backward his hind legs. Mae Munroe yawned, extending her arms at full length before her; regarded her fair ringed fingers and the four dimples across the back of each hand; reached for a cigarette and with the wry face of nausea tossed it back into its box; swung to a sitting posture on the side of the sofa, the dog springing from the curve of her arm to the floor, shaking himself.