Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/115

 When Jimmy came into the dining room he had on his blue suit.

"Glad you dressed up, dearie," his mother remarked, reaching to straighten his tie and pick a piece of lint off the lapel of his coat. "It will be kind of a celebration tonight. Minnie's got a lot to tell us, and Pete's comin' over."

"Elsie too?"

"Oh, yeh, I suppose so."

Footsteps outside hurrying up the stairs. . ..

"There she is!" they cried in a breath.

But it was the girl who lived in the flat above them.

Minnie's entrance was different from what they had anticipated. She came stodgily into the room lugging the paper bundle now slipping from its loosely tied string. Her face was pallid with fatigue and there was none of that exuberance they had been confident of.

"Minnie!" cried her mother in a voice filled with fear, "you didn't lose your job, did you?"

They all pressed eagerly forward, waiting her answer.

"Don't worry," she said finally, "everything's O. K."

Mrs. Flynn with a prodigious cry of relief rushed to help her out of her coat, and as Minnie flung down her hat Nettie picked it up, brushed it off, and hung it on the nail in the door.

"I think it would rest you to take off your shoes," suggested Michael Flynn, hoping to stimulate a desirable precedent, for his own feet were burning in their brogans.

"Put 'em up, sis. I'll unlace 'em," said Jimmy.

With an effort Minnie obeyed him. She stretched out on the chair, her head lolling to one side.

"Gee, you look all in, sis."

"Don't she, though," said Mrs. Flynn. "That's all right, Minnie dear, you needn't tell us anything about what you