"Minnie Flynn, you talk as if you was out o' your head. Carnations on a table when there's food on it."
"No, I ain't. All swell tables at the studio got flowers on 'em. Burn two punk sticks. Honest it smells like a dago joint. Ma, see if you can't get Mrs. Molowonsky to loan you her glass butter and sugar set, and, when pa comes in see that he don't take his shoes off. Tell him he's got to keep his coat on all evening if it kills him! Open a quart o' peaches, ma, I'll get a loaf cake. And be sure to peel the potatoes. I don't want Eleanor to think we're any low-down Irish family that sets the potatoes on in their peelings. How about a can of tomato soup, ma? We ought to start with some kind of a soup. I wish Mrs. Molowonsky would lend you them soup plates, too, they're awful up-to-date."
Mrs. Flynn and Nettie set the table, brushed the gathered dust and lint under the rug, burned the punk sticks and laid down the law to the bewildered Mr. Flynn who came home, as usual, exhausted from his work.
At the delicatessen Minnie bought a can of soup, a can of corn, some cooked macaroni, potato salad, six very thin slices of magenta colored roast beef, two dill pickles and half a pound of raisin cake. On her way home she stopped at Sullivan's, hurried in through the Ladies' Entrance and ordered two quart bottles of beer.
"Barrel stock?" asked the bartender.
"Not on your life," answered Minnie rather airily, "the best you got!"
"You must be entertainin' society this evening," he said. "How's your old man?"
"He's all right. Say, if you don't mind, I'm in a hurry. Got any quarts on ice?"
"Surest thing you know. Flush enough for Budweiser?"
"You bet I am, and make it snappy."
