She had only attended for four weeks and they had been altogether wasted. In her class there were several better girls, many brighter, one prettier, but none fatter. The schoolgirls marveled at the fatness of her legs when, skirts well tucked up, they all waded in the brook. Every cell of her body was plump and she had dimples in her wrists. And cheeks, like: A satin pincushion pink, Before rude pins have touched it. Her eyes were of the lagoon blue found in picture postcards of Venice and her hair was a curly yellow brush-heap. Sunning over with curls--you know, sort of ringolets. In fact, Warble was not unlike one of those Kewpie things, only she was more dressed. * * * * * Expelled! That's the way things were to come to Warble all her life. Fate laid on in broad strokes--in great splashes--in slathers. Expelled! And she had scarce dared hope for such a thing. * * * * * To sound the humor of Warble. She hated school. Books, restraint, routine, scratching slate pencils, gum under desks, smells--all the set up palette of the schoolroom was not to her a happy vehicle of self-expression. Often, in hope of being sent home, she had let a rosy tongue-tip protrude from screwed up red lips at teacher, but it had gone unpunished. And now-- Now, rocking in triumphant, glorious mirth, her plump shoulders hunched in very ecstasy, the child was on the peak! Expelled! Oh, gee! And all because she had put a caterpillar down Pearl Jane Tuttle's back. One little, measly caterpillar. Pearl Jane had sat right in front of her. A loose neckband round a scrawny neck. And when Pearl Jane wiggled, a space of neck between two thin, tight black pigtails--a consequent safe-deposit that was fairly crying out to have something dropped down it. A caterpillar mooching along the schoolroom aisle--clearly sent by Providence. Helpless in the grip of an irresistible subconscious complex, Warble scoops up the caterpillar and in an instant has fed him into the gaping maw at the back of that loose gingham neckband. Gr-r-r-r-rh! * * * * * That, then, is why Warble stood in such evident relief on the Pittsburgh block. Expelled! The world was hers! It had always been hers, to be sure, but it was now getting bigger and more hers every minute. The very first day she went to school, a little boy said to her: “Do you like me?” “No,” said Warble. The little boy gave her all his candy and his red balloon. So you see, she had a way--and got away with it. * * * * * Warble was an orphan. She had a paprika-seasoned sister, married to a chiropodist, in Oshkosh. But for all that, she planned to earn her own living.