All but her face; it was as if the suet-like inundation
of the flesh had not dared here. The chin was only slightly doubled; the
cheeks just a shade too plump. Neither was the eye heavy of lid or sunk
down behind a ridge of cheek. Between her eyes and upper lip, Miss Hoag
looked her just-turned twenty; beyond them, she was antediluvian,
deluged, smothered beneath the creamy billows and billows of self.
And yet, sunk there like a flower-seed planted too deeply to push its
way up to bloom, the twenty-year-old heart of Miss Hoag beat beneath its
carbonaceous layer upon layer, even skipped a beat at spring's
palpitating sweetness, dared to dream of love, weep of desire, ache of
loneliness and loveliness.
Isolated thus by the flesh, the spirit, too, had been caught in
nature's sebaceous trick upon Miss Hoag. Life had passed her by slimly.
But Miss Hoag's redundancy was not all literal. A sixth and saving sense
of humor lay like a coating of tallow protecting the surface of her. For
nature's vagary, she was pensioned on life's pay-roll at eighteen
dollars a week.
"Easy money, friends," Miss Hoag would _ad lib_. to the line-up outside
her railing; "how would some of you like to sit back and draw your wages
just for the color of your hair or the size of your shoes? You there,
that sailor boy down there, how'd you like to have a fox-trot with
Teenie? Something to tell the Jackies about.
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