the joint owners of Snooky. Snooky was
three-going-on-four, and looked something like an angel--only healthier
and with grimier hands. The whole neighbourhood borrowed her and tried
to spoil her; but Snooky would not spoil.
Alderman Mooney was down in the cellar fooling with the furnace. He was
in his furnace overalls--a short black pipe in his mouth. Three
protesting husbands had just left. As the Very Young Husband, following
Mrs. Mooney's directions, cautiously descended the cellar stairs,
Alderman Mooney looked up from his tinkering. He peered through a haze
of pipe-smoke.
"Hello!" he called, and waved the haze away with his open palm. "Come on
down! Been tinkering with this blamed furnace since supper. She don't
draw like she ought. 'Long toward spring a furnace always gets balky.
How many tons you used this winter?"
"Oh--ten," said the Very Young Husband shortly. Alderman Mooney
considered it thoughtfully. The Young Husband leaned up against the side
of the cistern, his hands in his pockets. "Say, Mooney, is that right
about Blanche Devine's having bought the house on the corner?"
"You're the fourth man that's been in to ask me that this evening. I'm
expecting the rest of the block before bedtime. She's bought it all
right."
The Young Husband flushed and kicked at a piece of coal with the toe of
his boot.
"Well, it's a darned shame!" he began hotly. "Jen was ready to cry at
supper. This'll be a fine neighbourhood for Snooky to grow up in! What's
a woman like that want to come into a respectable street for anyway? I
own my home and pay my taxes--"
Alderman Mooney looked up.
"So does she," he interrupted. "She's going to improve the place--paint
it, and put in a cellar and a furnace, and build a porch, and lay a
cement walk all round."
The Young Husband took his hands out of his pockets in order to
emphasize his remarks with gestures.
"What's that got to do with it? I don't care if she puts in diamonds for
windows and sets out Italian gardens and a terrace with peacocks on it.
You're the alderman of this ward, aren't you? Well, it was up to you to
keep her out of this block! You could have fixed it with an injunction
or something. I'm going to get up a petition--that's what I'm going--"
Alderman Mooney closed the furnace door with a bang that drowned the
rest of the threat. He turned the draft in a pipe overhead and brushed
his sooty palms briskly together like one who would put an end to a
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