MRS. TILBURY. But, Helma, what will we do about our dinner? I will give you two dollars if you will stay and serve the dinner. See, this nice new two-dollar bill? You shall have this. My guests are all here, and the dinner half cooked. Oh! you must not go now.
HELMA. I certainly must, Mrs. Tilsbury. I get five dollars for my talk. Tell Katy to cook the dinner.
KATY. Indeed, and I will not, ma’am. It’s not my work. I wouldn’t meddle with her dirty, Norwegian tricks. I won’t stay in the same house with her any longer anyway. My young man says he will not marry me if I do. She drove him out of the kitchen only yesterday, sassing him about the boss of his district, and calling him a low-down Irish pig. She said she would never vote for a Democrat, but John says she will never vote for a Democrat or Republican either, so long as the Irish rule New York.
HELMA. Seeing him would win me over to the Prohibition party.
KATY. Is it trying to be funny, you are Helma? No, John says that women will neither vote nor smoke in the State of Greater New York, so long as the green grass and golden harp in the hand are worth all the stars and striped rainbows in the heavens.
MRS. TILSBURY. Katy, you shall have the two dollars if you will serve up the dinner. It must be almost cooked, so it won’t be much work, and then you and John can use the money for two tickets and go to some nice play together to-morrow evening.
KATY. John’s not the boy for that, Mrs. Tilsbury. He wouldn’t take a girl’s hard-earned money before he was married to her. I am going to leave anyway now that Miss Mildred is being so talked about for her views on votes for women. He says that the only difference between men and women now is that men smoke and vote and women don’t, and that to marry a girl who did both would be like having another man about the house. He says he has his doubts about taking a girl to wife out of this house.
HELMA. You never saw me smoke but once, Katy Flanigan. I took an old stale cigarette out of a box Mr. Tilsbury had thrown away. I won’t stay here to be talked to like this no longer. (Goes out noisily.)
MRS. TILSBURY. Does Helma really smoke.