"I shall feel myself a failure as a chaperone surely," remarked Mrs. Green.
"We think you a tremendous success," tweedled the twins.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CLERK OF THE COUNCIL
We had a wonderful time at the City Hall that afternoon with Louis. It was quite near our hotel, so Dee's agony over Louis' feelings about carfare was assuaged.
My idea of a City Hall had always been that it was a very ugly and stiff place where City Fathers wrangled about sewerage and garbage collections, and whether they should or should not open up such and such a street or close such and such an alley,—a place where taxes were paid or evaded, and where one kicked about the size of the gas bill.
The Charleston City Hall was quite different. There may have been places where discontented persons contended about gas and taxes, but we did not see them. We were told that Charleston had but recently gone through what was a real riot on the subject of the election of the Mayor, but there was a dignity and peace breathing from the very stones of that old edifice that made us doubt the possibility of dissension having been within its walls.
City Fathers could not have mentioned such a thing as sewerage and garbage in the presence of those wonderful and august portraits and busts. As for opening streets that never had been opened before! Why do it? And alleys that had always been closed! Let well enough alone.