Champagne was not one of the commonplaces of that modest chop house. So the waiter opened the bottle with much ceremony. Susan and Etta startled when the cork popped ceilingward in the way that in such places is still regarded as fashionable. They watched with interested eyes the pouring of the beautiful pale amber liquid, were fascinated when they saw how the bubbles surged upward incessantly, imprisoned joys thronging to escape. And after the first glass, the four began to have the kindliest feelings for each other. Sorrow and shame, poverty and foreboding, took wings unto themselves and flew away. The girls felt deliciously warm and contented, and thought the young men charming--a splendid change from the coarse, badly dressed youths of the tenement, with their ignorant speech and rough, misshapen hands. They were ashamed of their own hands, were painfully self-conscious whenever lifting the glass to the lips brought them into view. Etta's hands in fact were not so badly spoiled as might have been expected, considering her long years of rough work; the nails were in fairly good condition and the skin was rougher to the touch than to the sight. Susan's hands had not really been spoiled as yet. She had been proud of them and had taken care of them; still, they were not the hands of a lady, but of a working girl. The young men had gentlemen's hands--strong, evidently exercised only at sports, not at degrading and deforming toil. The shorter and handsomer youth, who answered to the name of Fatty, for obvious but not too obvious reasons, addressed himself to Etta. John--who, it came out, was a Chicagoan, visiting Fatty--fell to Susan. The champagne made him voluble; he was soon telling all about himself--a senior at Ann Arbor, as was Fatty also; he intended to be a lawyer; he was fond of a good, time was fond of the girls--liked girls who were gay rather than respectable ones--"because with the prim girls you have to quit just as the fun ought really to begin." After two glasses Susan, warned by a slight dizziness, stopped drinking; Etta followed her example. But the boys kept on, ordered a second bottle. "This is the fourth we've had tonight," said Fatty proudly when it came. "Don't it make you dizzy?" asked Etta. "Not a bit," Fatty assured her. But she noticed that his tongue now swung trippingly loose. "You haven't been at--at this--long, have you?" inquired John of Susan. "Not long," replied she. Etta, somewhat giddied, overheard and put in, "We began tonight. We got tired of starving and freezing." John looked deepest sympathy into Susan's calm violet-gray eyes. "I don't blame you," said he. "A woman does have a--a hades of a time!" "We were going out to buy some clothes when you came," proceeded Etta. "We're in an awful state."