midnight
With pretty Rose Larsen and half a dozen others she played . They went in fluttering , beribboned parties to the theater ; they saw visions at symphony concerts , and slipped into exhibits of contemporary artists at private galleries on Fifth Avenue . When spring came they had walking parties in Central Park , in Van Cortlandt Park , on the Palisades , across Staten Island , and picnicked by themselves or with neat , trim-minded , polite men clerks from the various offices and stores where the girls worked . They had a perpetual joy in annoying Mrs. Fike by parties on fire-escapes , by lobster Newburgh suppers at midnight . They were discursively excited for a week when Rose Larsen was followed from the surface-car to the door by an unknown man ; and they were unhappily excited when , without explanations , slim , daring Jennie Cassavant was suddenly asked to leave the Home Club ; and they had a rose-lighted dinner when Livy Hedger announced her engagement to a Newark lawyer . Various were the Home Club women in training and work and ways ; they were awkward stenographers and dependable secretaries ; fashion artists and department-store clerks ; telephone girls and clever college-bred persons who actually read manuscripts and proof , and wrote captions or household-department squibs for women 's magazines -- real editors , or at least real assistant editors ; persons who knew authors and illustrators , as did the great Magen . They were attendants in dentists ' offices and teachers in night-schools and filing-girls and manicurists and cashiers and blue-linen-gowned super-waitresses in artistic tea-rooms .