A “mask and shadow dance” is as important a function to girls of Sadie’s and Rosie’s class as a cotillion is to girls of your class.  Such affairs are possible only in large dance halls, and to do them impressively costs the proprietor some money.  The guests rent costumes and masks and appear in very gala fashion indeed.  They dance in the rays of all kinds of colored lights thrown upon them from upper galleries.  During part of a waltz the dancers are bathed in rose-colored lights, which change suddenly to purple, a blue, or a green.  Some very weird effects are made, the lights being so manipulated that the dancers’ shadows are thrown, greatly magnified, on walls and floor.  At intervals a rain of bright-colored confetti pours down from above.  The scene becomes bacchanalian.  Color, light, music, confetti, the dance, together combine to produce an intense and voluptuous intoxication which the revelers deepen with drink.

The events of the latter part of that night were very vague in Sadie’s memory when she awoke late the next morning.  She remembered that she had tolerated familiarities which had been foreign to her experience heretofore, and that she had been led home by some friendly soul, at daylight, almost helpless from liquor.

Frightened, haunted by half-ashamed memories of that dance, Sadie spoiled a good bit of her work on Monday morning.  The forewoman descended on her with a torrent of coarse abuse, whereupon Sadie rose suddenly from her machine, and in a burst of hysterical profanity and tears rushed out of the factory, vowing never to return.  There was only one course, she decided, for her to take, and she took it.

“Sadie, why did you do it?” wailed Rosie the next time they met.

“It’s better than the factory,” said Sadie.

Tucking muslin underwear is dull work, but it is, in most ways, a more agreeable task than icing cakes in a St. Louis biscuit factory.  All day Edna M——­ stood over a tank filled with thick chocolate icing.  The table beside Edna’s tank was kept constantly supplied with freshly baked “lady-fingers,” and these in delicate handfuls Edna seized and plunged into the hot ooze of the chocolate.  Her arms, up to the elbows, went into the black stuff, over and over again all day.  At noon, over their lunch, the girls talked of their recreations, their clothes, their “fellows.”

Edna had not very much to contribute to the girls’ stories of gayety and adventure.  She led a quieter existence than most of the other girls, although her leanings were toward lively pleasures.  She was engaged to a young man who worked in a foundry and who was steady and perhaps rather too serious.  He was very jealous of Edna and exacted a stern degree of fidelity of her.

Before her engagement Edna had gone to a decent dancing school and dearly loved the dance.  Now she was not permitted to dance with any one but her prospective husband.  The bright talk at the noon hour made Edna feel that she was a very poor sport.