Besides that she intended to go herself and invite one of the girls if she were able to get all the things paid for before the theater season was over.  Last year everything got shabby so quickly and “looked like a rag,” before the season was over but she hoped for better luck this time.  She rose and put her new possessions away very carefully in the little closet and boxes and turned to the mirror.  The hair dresser had shown her a new way to dress her hair and she tried it now herself.  After a long time she met with fair success.  She did not call the family to see the result, for there might be more words of disapproval and though they would not influence her in the least still it was a bore to listen to them.  The new arrangement was very uncomfortable and it did seem strange to be apparently without ears but she was an earnest devotee and what it pleased the idol to dictate, that she did.  Next she tried the new concoctions for cheeks and eyebrows.  The result pleased her.  She called to her mother to ask the time and exclaiming at the lateness of the hour called back that she was dead tired and would go to bed.  When she hung up her skirt she was dismayed to see how worn it was.  She had paid for the style in it, not for the material.  She did not go to sleep directly though she had a right to be tired, for she had to get up very early each morning and she was obliged to stand all day at her work.  But she was troubled.  Even the pleasure of possessing the clothes so carefully protected in the closet could not take away the anxiety produced by the conscious need of rubbers and a winter suit.  But at last the poor little devotee, the ardent worshiper of the twin idols, worn out by thinking of it all fell asleep.

Over on Blank Street, in another part of town that day, another worshiper and her devoted mother had been talking over plans for the future.  Both were “climbers,” at least they thought it was climbing.  They had social ambitions and it was whispered by their enemies that they intended, at whatever cost to enter the inner circle of those who worshiped the idols.  Last year the young girl who wanted to go to college had “come out.”  It had been a wonderful season but it had left her with a pale face and dark circles under her lovely eyes.  The rest cure had done much for her but her physician had said another season in town would undo all that had been done.  Her mother was loath to believe it.  She had always been able to dismiss her husband’s arguments and had done so successfully the night before when he plead for a year of roughing it in the west, society forgotten and the things of nature for amusement and fun.  “If we drop out now,” she told her daughter, “all is lost.”  And so they made their plans.  The daughter was not an adept in learning the rapid succession of combination dances wherein orientalism, the harem, the submerged tenth, and the various beasts of the field and fowls of the barnyard figured, so the first step was to secure a teacher who would correct her errors and give her skill in the performances which had robbed so many of her friends of all reserve and had taught them the abandonment of motion.