DAY DREAMS
“We had a table cloth, as white as the paint on the wall beside my kitchen stove, when it was new, five years ago. Ice tinkled in the glasses, but I saw every glass cloud up to hide the ice, because it costs an awful lot these days: They brought the turkey in,—it must have weighed twelve pounds. Its brown breast was so fat it seemed about to burst. It sizzled. Um. Then came the cranberry, all red and clear and quivery from its mold. A pianola played all the time, and we danced on the swell white tiles up to the cashier’s desk.
“I had on a picture hat, black velvet, trimmed with fur and cloth of gold, just like a movie star—that’s how I felt. Say, ain’t it queer, the things you dream about?”
A half a loaf of bread lay awry on a crumby and rumpled and mended table cloth where the breakfast dishes were stacked in crooked piles. The room was dark ... an oil stove in the corner made the hot air heavier. On the tubs, wrapped in towels, a tiny baby lay. The mother was speaking: and trying to wipe the wisps of hair out of her heavy eyes. She said: “Say, ain’t it queer the things you dream about?”