"Oh, my poor little darling," Mrs. Jimmie fluttered, "What on earth ails you?" She turned to the doctor. "Is he going to die?"
"I think not," said the doctor. "It's only a bad case of cinder-in-the-eyetis."
Thus reassured, Mrs. Wellington went into the patient's eye with her handkerchief. "Is that the eye?" she asked.
"No!" he howled, "the other one."
She went into that and came out with the cinder.
"There! It's just a tiny speck."
Wellington regarded the mote with amazement. "Is that all? It felt as if I had Pike's Peak in my eye." Then he waxed tender. "Oh, Lucretia, how can I ever——"
But she drew away with a disdainful: "Give me back my hand, please."
"Now, Lucretia," he protested, "don't you think you're carrying this pretty far?"
"Only as far as Reno," she answered grimly, which stung him to retort: "You'd better take the beam out of your own eye, now that you've taken the cinder out of mine," but she, noting that they were the center of interest, observed: "All the passengers are enjoying this, my dear. You'd better go back to the café."