She laughed a little, then looked grave. “Does your father say you are?”
“Yes—when he's in a mood to flatter me. Other times, other names. He has quite a list.”
“You mustn't mind,” she said, gently. “He's been getting some pretty severe shocks. What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him, Bibbs. I've always been sure he's very big.”
“Yes. Big and—blind. He's like a Hercules without eyes and without any consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to grow stronger. Stronger for what? For nothing.”
“Are you sure, Bibbs? It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger for something, even though he doesn't know what it is. Perhaps what he and his kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T see it—so great none of us could see it.”
“No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving underground—”
“Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight,” she finished for him, cheerily.
“Into the smoke,” said Bibbs. “Look at the powder of coal-dust already dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday. That's from the little pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday! There's a fleck of soot on your cheek. Some pig sent it out into the air; he might as well have thrown it on you. It would have been braver, for then he'd have taken his chance of my whipping him for it if I could.”
“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.”