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From a Bench in Our Square by Samuel Hopkins Adams
page 7 of 259 (02%)
old, half-shelved pedagogue has access to, and when the Bonnie Lassie
came to Our Square to make herself and us famous with her tiny bronzes
(this was before she had captured, reformed, and married Cyrus the
Gaunt), I took him to her and he fell boyishly and violently in love
with her beauty and her genius alike, all of which was good for his
developing soul. She arranged for his art training.

"But you know, Dominie," she used to say, wagging her head like a
profound and thoughtful bird; "this is all very foolish and shortsighted
on my part. Five years from now that gutter-godling of yours will be
doing work that will make people forget poor little me and my poor
little figurines."

To which I replied that even if it were true, instead of the veriest
nonsense, about Julien Tenney or any one else ever eclipsing her, she
would help him just the same!

But five years from then Julien had gone over to the Philistines.


II

Justly catalogued, Roberta Holland belonged to the idle rich. She would
have objected to the latter classification, averring that, with the
rising cost of furs and automobile upkeep, she had barely enough to keep
her head above the high tide of Fifth Avenue prices. As to idleness, she
scorned the charge. Had she not, throughout the war, performed
prodigious feats of committee work, all of it meritorious and some of it
useful? She had. It had left her with a dangerous and destructive
appetite for doing good to people. Aside from this, Miss Roberta was a
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