d they acts too like easy spenders."

As Susan was facing that way, she examined them. They were young
men, rather blond, with smooth faces, good-natured eyes and
mouths; they were well dressed--one, the handsomer, notably so.
Susan merely glanced; both men at once smiled at her with an
unimpertinent audacity that probably came out of the champagne
bottle in a silver bucket of ice on their table.

"Shall I tell 'em to come over?" said the waiter.

"Yes," replied Susan.

She was calm, but Etta twitched with nervousness, saying, "I
wish I'd had your experience. I wish we didn't look so
dreadful--me especially. _I_'m not pretty enough to stand out
against these awful clothes."

The two men were pushing eagerly toward them, the taller and
less handsome slightly in advance. He said, his eyes upon Susan,
"We were lonesome, and you looked a little that way too. We're much
obliged." He glanced at the waiter. "Another bottle of the same."

"I don't want anything to drink," said Susan.

"Nor I," chimed in Etta. "No, thank you."

The young man waved the waiter away with, "Get it for my friend
and me, then." He smiled agreeably at Susan. "You won't mind my
friend and me drinking?"

"Oh, no."

"And maybe you'll change your mind," said the shorter man to
Etta. "You see, if we all drink, we'll get acquainted faster.
Don't you like champagne?"

"I never tasted it," Etta confessed.

"Neither did I," admitted Susan.

"You're sure to like it," said the taller man to Susan--his
friend presently addressed him as John. "Nothing equal to
it for making friends. I like it for itself, and I like it for
the friends it has made me."

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 a