“I don't,” retorted the fairy, mutinously. “Who is the Bonnie Lassie? You all have such queer names here, Mr. Dominie!”
“In private life she's Mrs. Cyrus Staten: otherwise Cecily Willard.”
The golden lights in the fairy's eyes deepened with astonishment. “Not the famous Miss Willard who does the figurines! Does she live way down here in this—this—”
“Slum,” I supplied. “Don't be afraid to say it. Our Square isn't sensitive to what outsiders think of us.”
“This nice, queer old park,” concluded the fairy with dignity. “And I suppose she is very old and wise and—is she kind?”
“She is very young and lovely to look at and as wise as she needs to be for her own happiness and—come along and see her.”
“But you mustn't tell her—'' was as far as she got when the Bonnie Lassie came out of the studio with a smudge of clay on the tip of her chin, and regarded my pink and captive fairy with undisguised amazement.
“This young discovery of mine,” I explained, “has come to Our Square for the purpose of not seeing the Little Red Doctor. Dead-Men's-Shoes struck up a professional acquaintance with her in the country and told her about the Doctor—whom she doesn't want to see—being in Our Square. As she hasn't seen him for several years and as he has been trying hard and conscientiously to forget her, she has come, incognita, where he is, in order to keep on not seeing him and to discover whether he has forgotten. It's all just as simple as it sounds.”
My fairy suddenly became a person, and a very decided person. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I am not incognita. My name is Ethel Bennington, and I think you are a very unkind old man.”
The Bonnie Lassie set a slender, strong hand on the visitor's wrist and drew her within. “Never mind him, my dear,” she said softly. “He isn't really unkind. He's just a tease.” She paused and studied her caller a moment. Then, with her irresistible smile, she said: “I know it's dreadful of me—but, would you mind if I just sketched you hastily?”