Nance shrieked her derision. Her own charms, compared with Birdie's generous ones, seemed absurdly meager, as she watched the older girl blow rings from the cigarette which she held daintily between her first and second finger. Nance had been initiated into smoking and chewing tobacco before she was ten, but neither appealed to her. Watching Birdie smoke, she had a sudden desire to try it again. "Give us a puff, Birdie," she said. Birdie tossed the box over and looked at her wrist-watch. "We ought to be fixing something for you to wear to-night," she said. "Like as not Mac and Monte 'll turn up and ask us to go somewhere for supper." "Who is Monte?" asked Nance with breathless interest. "He's a fat-headed swell Mac runs with. Spends dollars like nickels. No rarebit and beer for him; it's champagne and caviar every time. You cotton to him, Nance; he'll give you anything you want." "I don't want him to give me anything," said Nance stoutly. "Time I'm earning fifteen dollars a week, I'll be making presents myself." Birdie lifted her eyebrows and sighed. "You funny kid!" she said, "you got a heap to learn." During the early part of the afternoon the girls shortened one of Birdie's dresses and tacked in its folds to fit Nance's slender figure. Birdie worked in fits and starts; she listened every time anything stopped in the street below, and made many trips to the window. By and by her easy good humor gave place to irritability. At five o'clock she put on her hat, announcing that she had to go over to the drug store to do some telephoning. "Lock the door," she counseled, "and if anybody knocks while I'm gone, don't answer." Nance, left alone, sewed on for a while in a flutter of happy thoughts; then she got up and turned her chair so she would not have to crane her neck to see the photograph on the dresser. "The making of an awful pretty girl!" she whispered; then she got up and went over to the mirror. Pulling out the hairpins that held the elaborate puffs in place, she let her shining mass of hair about her shoulders and studied her face intently. Her mouth, she decided, was too big, her eyes too far apart, her neck too thin. Then she made a face at herself and laughed: "Who cares?" she said. By and by it got too dark to sew; the match box refused to be found, and she decided it was time to stop anyhow. She opened the window and, gaily humming the music of the Little Bear dance, leaned across the sill, while the cool evening air fanned her hot cheeks.