From a Bench in Our Square | Page 8

"The very same," responded Julien with twinkling eyes.
"What is he doing?"
"He's one of the few remaining examples of the sidewalk or
public-view school of art."
"Yes, but what does he do it for?"
"His living."

"Do people give him money for it? Do you think I might give him
something?" she asked, looking uncertainly at the artist, who, on hands
and knees and with tongue protruding, was putting a green head on a
red bird, too absorbed even to notice the onlookers.
"I think he'd be tickled pink."
She took a quarter from her purse, hesitated, then slipped it into her
companion's hand.
"You give it to him. I think he'd like it better."
"Oh, no; I don't think he'd like it at all. In fact, I doubt if he'd take it
from me."
"Why not?"
"Well, you see," explained Julien blandly, "we're rather intimately
connected." He raised his voice. "Hello, Dad!"
The decorator furled his tongue, lifted his head, changed his crayon,
replied, "Hello, Lad," and continued his work. "What d' you think of
that?" he added, after a moment, triumphantly pointing a yellow crayon
at the green-headed red-bird.
"Some parrot!" enthused Julien.
"'T ain't a parrot. It's a nightingale," retorted the artist indignantly. "You
black-and-white fellows never do understand color."
"It's a corker, anyway," said Julien. "Dad here's a--an art patron who
wants to contribute to the cause."
The girl, whose face had become flushed and almost frightened, held
out her quarter.
"I--I--don't know," she began. "I was interested in your picture and I
thought--Mr. Tenney said--"

Peter Quick Banta took the coin with perfect dignity. "Thank you," said
he. "There ain't much appreciation of art just at this season. But if you'll
come down to Coney about June, I'll show you some sand-modeling
that is sand-modeling--'s much as five dollars a day I've taken in there."
Miss Holland recovered her social poise.
"I'd like to very much," she said cheerfully.
She and Julien walked on in silence. Suddenly he laughed, a little
jarringly. "Well," he said, "does that help you to place me?"
"I'm not trying to place you," she answered.
"Is that quite true?" he mocked.
"No; it isn't. It's a downright lie," said Bobbie finding courage to raise
her eyes to his.
"And now, I suppose, I shall be 'my good man' or something like that,
to you."
"Do you think it likely?"
"You called MacLachan that, you know," he reminded her.
"Long ago. When I was--when I didn't understand Our Square."
"And now, of course, our every feeling and thought is an open book to
your penetrating vision."
Her lip quivered. "I don't know why you should want to be so hateful to
me."
For a flashing second his eyes answered that appeal with a look that
thrilled and daunted her. "To keep from being something else that I've
no right to be," he muttered.
"How many more sittings do you think it will take to finish the

picture?" she asked, striving to get on safer ground.
"Only one or two, I suppose," he answered morosely.
Such was Julien's condition of mind after the last sitting that he actually
left the precious portrait unguarded by neglecting to lock the door of
the studio on going out, and the Bonnie Lassie and I, happening in,
beheld it in its fulfillment. A slow flush burned its way upward in the
Bonnie Lassie's face as she studied it.
"He's done it!" she exclaimed. "Flower and flame! Why did I ever take
to sculpture? One can't get that in the metal."
"He's done it," I echoed.
"Of course, technically, it's rather a sloppy picture."
"It's a glorious picture!" I cried.
"Naturally that," returned the exasperating critic. "It always will
be--when you paint with your heart's blood."
"Do you think your friend Bobbie appreciates the medium in which
she's presented?"
"If she doesn'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