Central. The window of the room which served as a parlor and dining room overlooked the elevated tracks, but because of the noise and whirling dust, it was seldom open. A musty closeness made the room oppressive. There lingered the faint sickening perfume of Chinese punk sticks which were always burned before the arrival of company.
On the drab walls of the parlor was a patchwork of bright colored pictures; family groups, post cards, Harrison Fisher heads, plaques, calendars sent by Ninth Avenue tradespeople, and innumerable clippings from papers and magazines. Wired to the gas jet which vibrated when the elevated passed the house was a Chinese musical lantern which was her sister Nettie's only contribution to the home. The lantern, composed of little brass bells and long pieces of glass wired together, tinkled monotonously.
There was a red plush sofa in the room, and five oak-stained pine chairs which matched the center table. The table was covered with a red damask cloth heavily bordered with tangled fringe. In the center of the table was a paper palm; another paper plant stood on the mantelpiece, a flowering geranium; in the window two small flower pots held perennial paper carnation blooms. In one corner was a glided easel on which rested a large framed crayon of Minnie as a squirming, fat, naked baby lying upon a fuzzy rug—a horrid picture that made Minnie blush.
The fuzzy rug was a graying Angora which still served the Flynn family as a decoration. It had been meant for the floor, but Mrs. Flynn, always upset when it was carelessly scuffled by anyone except visitors, nailed it to the back of a dilapidated morris chair. No one in the family was ever permitted to lean against it.
Minnie often spoke of her flat as a "swell little place,"
