"She has been with 'Poulter's' fifteen years."

"Almost as long as I have," put in Miss Nippett.

"The figure?" asked Mavis.

"The statue 'Turpsichor,'" corrected Mr Poulter.

"Turpsichor," in common with other down-at-heel people, had
something of a history. She was originally the plaster cast model of
a marble statue ordered by a sorrowing widow to grace the last
resting-place of the dear departed, a widow, whose first transports
of grief were as extravagant as the order she gave to the monumental
mason. But when the time came for the statue to be carved, and a
further deposit to be paid, the widow had been fascinated by a man
whom she had met in a 'bus, when on her way to visit the cemetery
where her husband was interred. She was now loth to bear the cost of
the statue and, as she had changed her address, she took no notice
of the mason's repeated applications. "Turpsichor" had then been
sold cheap to a man who had started a tea-garden, in the vain hope
of reviving the glories of those forgotten institutions; when he had
drifted into bankruptcy, she had been knocked down for a song to a
second-hand shop, where she had been bought for next to nothing by
Mr Poulter as "the very thing." Now she stood in the entrance hall
of the academy, where, it can truthfully be said, that no heathen
goddess received so much adoration and admiration as was bestowed on
"Turpsichor" by Mr Poulter and Miss Nippett. To these simple souls,
it was the finest work of art to be found anywhere in the world,
while the younger amongst the pupils regarded the forlorn statue