From a Bench in Our Square, page 19 by Samuel Hopkins Adams
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n't--which she probably does," said the Bonnie Lassie, "she will find out something to her advantage when she sees me to-morrow. I'm going home to 'phone her."
In answer to the summons, Bobbie came. She looked, I thought, as I saw her from my bench, troubled and perplexed and softened, and glowingly lovely. At the door of the Bonnie Lassie's house she was met with the challenge direct.
"What have you been doing to my artistic ward?"
"Nothing," replied Bobbie with unwonted meekness, and to prove it related the incidents of the touring-car, the supper at the Taverne Splendide, and the encounter with the paternal colorist.
"That isn't Julien's father," said the sculptress. "He's only an adoptive father. But Julien adores him, as he ought to. The real father, so I've heard, was a French gentleman--"
"I don't care who his father was!" cried Bobbie. (The Bonnie Lassie's face took on the expression of an exclamation point.) "I can't bear to think of his having to do servant's work. And I told him so yesterday."
"Did you look like that while you were telling him?"
"Like what? I suppose so."
"And what did he do?"
"Do? He didn't do anything."
"Then," pronounced the Bonnie Lassie, "he's a stick of wood--hardwood--with a knot-hole for a heart."
"He isn't! Well, perhaps he is. He was very horrid at the last."
"About what?"
"About taking money."
"I'm a prophetess! And you're a patroness. Born in us, I suppose. You did try to give him money."
"Just to loan it. Enough so that he could go away to study and paint. He wouldn't even let me do that; so I--I--I offered to buy the picture of me, and he said--he said--Cecily, do you think he's sometimes a little queer in his head?"
"Not in the head, necessarily. What did he say?"
"He said he'd bought it himself at the highest price ever paid. And he said it so obstinately that I saw it was no use, so I just told him that I hoped I'd see him when I came