Now, that may have been the artist of it breaking through, or it may have been just the way of her invincible tact and management; you never can tell, with the Bonnie Lassie. But it's a proven fact that nobody can sit to her without giving up his heart's secrets, and sometimes she puts them in the bronze. Most unfairly I was banished, for the brown-and-gold fairy with a flush of pleasure said she'd sit at once. And from that sitting grew another sitting and another and many to follow. Sometimes I was bidden in. It was a sheer delight to sit there and watch those two young creatures, the sculptress gay and sunny and splendid in the glad beauty of power and achievement; the model, wistful, sweet, and vivid by turns, a fairy from a brighter world bringing her fairy gold to our grim and dusty neighborhood. Out of a working silence the brown-and-gold fairy spoke one day.
“Is he poor?”
“Is who—” I began.
But the quicker apprehension of the artist cut in on me.
“It isn't exactly a fashionable practice, the Little Red Doctor's. Is it, dominie?”
“No. But poor—certainly not, by the standards of Our Square. He has a new black suit for professional service every year.”
“Um!” said the fairy doubtfully. Then, after a pause, “He could have been rich, you know.”
“Could he?” said the Bonnie Lassie, holding her iron poised over the shadow of a flying dimple.
“An invention. Something to do with his surgery,” explained the girl. “Father said there were big possibilities in it. He offered to finance it himself. But he—the Lit—Dr. Smith wouldn't even take out a patent on it.”
The Bonnie Lassie lowered her weapon. “Do you mean the pressure brace for atrophy?”