From a Bench in Our Square

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

I could feel the Bonnie Lassie fidgeting on the bench. For a moment I endured it. Then I said:

“Well, Lassie, why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I what?”

“Take your usual constitutional, over by the railings. Opposite Schepstein’s.”

“That isn’t my usual constitutional, and you know it, Dominie,” said the Bonnie Lassie with dignity.

“Isn’t it? Well, curiosity killed a cat, you know.”

“How shamelessly you garble! It was—”

“Never mind; the quotation is erroneous, anyway. It should be: suppressed curiosity killed a cat.”

The Bonnie Lassie sniffed.

“Rather than be dislodged from my precarious perch on this bench,” I pursued, “through the trembling imparted to it by your clinging to the back to restrain yourself from going to see what is up, I should almost prefer that you would go—and peek.”