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.
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