fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as
"marriage-girls."

Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work
because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around.
Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active,
country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage.

The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and
respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became
wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months
that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them.
Meddlesome Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou.
While you are shaking hands please take notice--cautiously--of
their attire. Yes, cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a
stare as a lady in a box at the horse show is.

Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a
badly-fitting purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too
long; but her ermine muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts
will be ticketed in the windows at $7.98 before the season is over.
Her cheeks are pink, and her light blue eyes bright. Contentment
radiates from her.

Nancy you would call a shop-girl--because you have the habit. There
is no type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so
this is what the type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour,
and the exaggerated straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the
correct flare. No furs protect her against the bitter spring air,
but she wears her short broadcloth jacket as jauntily as though