The Programmed People by Jack Sharkey

Grace Horton appraised herself in the mirror, and was not pleased with what she saw. "Face it, Grace," she said aloud. "You are positively hopeless. " She tilted her head to one side. "Well, nearly hopeless. " Her eyes were good, that was something. Wide, gray and thickly lashed, they were her best feature. Her nose was just too snub to be pert. Her mouth, though her lips were generous, and her teeth well-aligned, had too much slack at the outer edges. She either held it in a perpetual smile -- "An easy way to be mistaken for an idiot," she remarked bitterly -- or it sagged. Her hair, an unfortunate mustard-and-brass shade, would not hold a curl for more than two hours at the outside. "All I need," she decided ruefully, "is a brand-new head."

Grace leaned away from the mirror to consult the alarm clock which lay almost hidden behind an impressive array of cosmetics. Five till eleven. "He's not coming," she said to her image. "Give it up girl. He said he'd come, and he probably meant it when he said it, but he's not coming. " She turned from the mirror and began to undress, beside the single three-quarter-sized bed. "And why should he come? " she asked herself tiredly. "He doesn't love you. He never -- to his credit, damn it -- said he did, either. Hive Law requires that all males shall marry by the age of twenty-five, or be taken for Readjustment. Bachelors are not good for racial survival, unquote. Unwed girls may list themselves in the classified section of the phone book, along with their qualifications, then start sweating it out by the phone. So I did, so he called me, so we're engaged. But that doesn't mean we have to like it. Or that _he_ has to, anyhow. And I'm not sure that _I_ do."