Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/22

 bed." A ponderous sigh escaped her which sounded such a note of intense physical longing that it struck Minnie as ludicrous and she burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Elsie, her gray face suddenly convulsed with raging hatred, reached over and pinched her. "You shut up!" she shrilled. "You make me tired. You walk alone, Minnie Flynn, that's what you can do. Walk your fool head off, for all I care!" and she rushed away, down the street and around the corner, Minnie's taunting laughter trailing after her.

The Flynns lived on Ninth Avenue between Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Streets, in what was called in that locality "a classy brownstone brick front." It was the most pretentious tenement house in the neighborhood. Four stories high, it housed sixteen families. Eight of the apartments had narrow front windows which afforded a view of the street, while the other eight overlooked dingy backyards webbed with clothes-lines and fire-escapes.

The entrance to the house justified the pride of its tenants. Two discolored and badly chipped marble columns supported a shell-shaped canopy, the iron framework of which still held a few of the original mosaics of colored glass. The floor and the two crumbling steps to the sidewalk were also marble. A panel of art glass decorated with a gaudy design was set into the door, and in scroll letters was written, THE CENTRAL. It was the only door in the neighborhood not scrawled over with initials.

When Minnie met a new fellow at a dance and he asked to see her again she was always pleased to give him her address. "You'll know the house by the marble entrance,"