Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/21

 Elsie's eyes filled with tears and she turned her face toward the shop windows so Minnie couldn't see them. She spoke so low that Minnie had to bend her head to hear. "You can't help who you love, Min, so there's no use fightin' against it. You love or you don't love, and there's no regulatin' it like you do your meals, or work, or anything else."

"I suppose so," Minnie replied indifferently, "or I wouldn't o' turned down Dan Sullivan with his prospects of gettin' his father's saloon some day, and started keeping steady company with Billy MacNally."

"By the way, Min, goin' out with Billy tonight?" Whenever Elsie spoke of "going out" there was a wistful note in her voice.

"Yeh, I guess we'll go out tonight." Minnie always pretended an indifference to Billy. "But I don't care much about it, though."

"Where'll you go?" The words came breathlessly from Elsie. It excited her to talk about a good time. "Will you go to a movie?"

"I dunno. I don't care much. Anywhere's better than sittin' in the dining room. Pa always comes in and planks himself down and takes off his shoes. You'd think he'd have the decency to stay in the kitchen, but not him. Oh, no, he's got to hang around and gas all night about the plumbin' business and never give Billy a chance to talk about the meat business, just as if that was nothin' at all."

"And where does Pete go?" Elsie was just a poor soft fool, Minnie thought to herself, and suddenly the sight of that eager, sickly face splotched with pimples sickened her, and she broke away from her with a shudder of disgust.

"To bed," she answered laconically, "and snores. Makes a noise you could hear a city block."

Elsie's voice sunk to a dead whisper as she echoed, "To