"
"IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so
rhetorically? IS there?"
"Is there? There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary--a fleck on each.
One landed since I mentioned the first."
She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded
in transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric. They
were entirely matter-of-course about it.
An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary
for the last block or so, and passed ahead during the removal of
the soot. "There!" said the elderly wife. "You're always wrong when
you begin guessing about strangers. Those two young people aren't
honeymooners at all--they've been married for years. A blind man
could see that."
"I wish I did know who threw that soot on you," said Bibbs, looking up
at the neighboring chimneys, as they went on. "They arrest children
for throwing snowballs at the street-cars, but--"
"But they don't arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures
in the houses crooked every time they go by. Nor for the uproar they
make. I wonder what's the cost in nerves for the noise of the city
each year. Yes, we pay the price for living in a 'growing town,'
whether we have money to pay or none.
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