"Yes," Mary admitted, "but you can chuck it on the floor if you're fly." She took another sip of the water, and then asked: "Why don't you shake this man if you're not scared of him. You can come with me, you know." "It wouldn't be good business," Carrie declared. "I need somebody with influence to look after me in case I'm arrested." Mary was silent for a minute, thinking. "Perhaps you're right," she granted; "there's one of 'em I'd like to find." "Who is it?" "I'll tell you sometime.--Look here: I don't feel like workin' Broadway to-night, an' I've got some money. Let's do a dance-hall." They "did" several. At the first a mask-ball was in progress; the bachanalian guests had rented extravagant costumes; confetti was tossed by the onlookers, and swiftly shifting lights of red and blue, of green and purple, played upon the dancers, whose whirling shadows, monstrously magnified, were thrown upon sheeted walls. At another, there was an explosion of obscene epithets followed by a fight, which made retreat advisable; and at a third, the dances were so short and the intervals provided for the solicitations of the waiters were so long that both girls wearied of the scene. On Tenth Avenue they at last found, however, a place more to their liking. It was the usual type of room, enlarged by tearing out the thin partitions that had once divided it into several tenements. The lights shone sick through the clouding smoke, and the air was heavy with the odors of dust, tobacco, alcohol, and sweat. But the music was lively, the floor crowded, and the little tables along the walls were surrounded by laughing groups of drinking men and women. Of the former, though most were hollow-chested, pale-cheeked, hawk-nosed, some showed clearly that they came to plunder; and if the majority of the latter were gum-chewing working-girls still in their earliest teens, many were of the variety to which the two newcomers now belonged. Mary and her companion sat down at a table near the door. They nodded to the burly, cigar-smoking "Boss," who moved energetically about, urging bloodless lads to find partners, and now and then himself taking a turn with a neglected girl. They exchanged familiar greetings, though they had never before seen her, with the false-jeweled woman whose business it was to assist the boss in stimulating the dancers by precept and example. And they watched the scene with a gaze grave and calculating.