Miss Sternberger spread the square train of a flame-colored robe full length on the green carpet and drew back a corner of the hem to display the lacy avalanche beneath.  Then she bowed slightly and turned toward the door.

Mrs. Schlimberg laid a detaining hand on her sleeve.  “Just a minute, Miss Sternberger.  Mr. Arnheim’s brought in some models he wants us to look at.”

SOB SISTER

Physics can answer whence goes the candle-flame when it vanishes into blackness and what becomes of sound when the great maw of silence digests it.  But what science can know the destiny of the pins and pins and pins, and what is the oblivion which swallows that great army of street-walking women whose cheeks are too pink and who dwell outside the barbed-wire fence of respectability?

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!”