Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/15

 "Lord, Papa Grouse, you sure gave me a fright. You'd think I'd never seen a drunk before!"

He lurched again, now to his feet, and rocked upon them.

She reached out to help him, but he shot away from her. Bent almost double he was sidling over toward the lamp post. "Papa Grouse," she laughed again, "you look just like an open safety pin."

"Go t'hell!"

"I'm on my way, old man!" Now she was shaking with shrill merriment. "Steady now! Crack! I knew you'd do it!" . . . "Oh, God," she said to herself, "when he hit his head on the fire plug he closed up slow—just like a safety pin!"

"Just like a safety pin," she kept repeating to herself as she walked swiftly away, not waiting to see him roll to the edge of the sidewalk and tumble into the gutter. "Bet that old woman of his gives him the devil when he gets home. Poor Papa Grouse!"

As she rounded the corner she heard the shuffle of running feet in back of her and a woman's voice, choppy and rasping, calling her name. She wheeled around and saw Elsie Bicker. Elsie was breathless from her run and her gray, anæmic face was flushed with a sudden, unnatural color. "Say, what's the idea of the marathon?"

"To keep warm," Minnie answered good-humoredly, "and then I'm feelin' kind of O. K. to-nighttonight [sic]. I was just thinkin' to myself, Els, that life ain't so rotten, is it?"

"Aw, I'm onto you," said Elsie with a superior air. Elsie prided herself on her frankness. "You're feelin' good because the girls laughed at your cuttin' up to-nighttonight [sic]."

The recollection of Minnie's performance in the locker room brought a faint smile to Elsie's eyes. Again she saw the girls of The Fashion Department Store in a restless semi-