“I will not call my cellar ‘The Coffee Pot’ lest a worse thing befall it.”
“You are a sensible young woman, Miss Barbara Ann Waterbury.”
“It is true that my parents named me that,” said she, “but my friends call me ‘Barbran’ because I always used to call myself that when I was little, and I want to be called Barbran here.”
“That’s very friendly of you,” I observed.
She gave me a swift, suspicious look. “You think I’m a fool,” she observed calmly. “But I’m not. I’m going to become a local institution. A local institution can’t be called Barbara Ann Waterbury, unless it’s a crêche or a drinking-fountain or something like that, can it?”
“It cannot, Barbran.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dominie,” said Barbran gratefully. She then proceeded to sketch out for me her plans for making her Coffee Cellar and herself a Local Institution, which should lure hopeful seekers for Bohemia from the far parts of Harlem and Jersey City, and even such outer realms of darkness as New Haven and Cohoes.
“That’s what I intend to do,” said Barbran, “as soon as I get my Great Idea worked out.”
What the Great Idea was, I was to learn later and from other lips. In fact, from the lips of young Phil Stacey, who appeared, rather elaborately loitering out from behind the fountain, shortly after my new friend had departed, a peculiar look upon his extremely plain and friendly face. Young Mr. Stacey is notable, if for no other reason than that he represents a flat artistic failure on the part of the Bonnie Lassie, who has tried him in bronze, in plaster, and in clay with equal lack of success. There is something untransferable in the boy’s face; perhaps its outshining character. I know that I never yet have said to any woman who knew him, no matter what her age, condition, or sentimental predilections, “Isn’t he a homely cub!” that she didn’t reply indignantly: “He’s sweet!” Now when women—wonderful women like the Bonnie Lassie and stupid women like Mrs. Rosser, the twins’ aunt, and fastidious women like Madame Tallafferr—unite in terming a smiling human freckle “sweet,” there is nothing more to be said. Adonis may as well take a back seat and the Apollo Belvedere seek the helpful resources of a beauty parlor. Said young Phil carelessly:
“Dominie, who’s the newcomer?”