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Now the way of a snake with a bird is as nothing for fascination compared to the way of the Bonnie Lassie with the doomed person whom she has marked down as a subject. Barbran hesitated, capitulated, came to the Bonnie Lassie’s house, moused about Our Square in a rapt manner and stayed. She rented a room from the Angel of Death (“Boggs Kills Bugs” is the remainder of his sign, which is considered to lend tone and local interest to his whole side of the Square), just over Madame Tallafferr’s apartments, and, in the course of time, stopped at my bench and looked at me contemplatively. She was a small person with shy, soft eyes.

“The Bonnie Lassie sent you,” said I.

She nodded.

“You’ve come here to live–Heaven only knows why–but we’re glad to see you. And you want to know about the people; so the Bonnie Lassie said, ‘Ask the Dominie; he landed here from the ark.’ Didn’t she?”

Barbran sat down and smiled at me.

“Having sought information,” I pursued, “on my own account, I learn that you are the only daughter of a Western millionaire ranch-owner. How does it feel to revel in millions?”

“Romantic,” said she.

“Of course you have designs upon us.”

“Yes.”

“Humanitarian, artistic, or sociological?”

“Oh, nothing long and clever like that.”

“You grow more interesting. Having designs upon us, you doubtless wish my advice.”

“No,” she answered softly: “I’ve done it already.”

“Rash and precipitate adventuress! What have you done already?”

“Started my designs. I’ve rented the basement of Number 26.”

“Are you a rag-picker in disguise?”

“I’m going to start a coffee cellar. I was thinking of calling it ‘The Coffee Pot.’ What do you think?”

“So you do wish my advice. I will give it to you. Do you see that plumber’s shop next to the corner saloon?” I pointed to the Avenue whose ceaseless stream of humanity flows past Our Square without ever sweeping us into its current. “That was once a tea-shop. It was started by a dear little, prim little old maiden lady. The saloon was run by Tough Bill Manigan. The little old lady had a dainty sign painted and hung it up outside her place, ‘The Teacup.’ Tough Bill took a board and painted a sign and hung it up outside his place; ‘The Hiccup.’ The dear little, prim little old maiden lady took down her sign and went away. Yet there are those who say that competition is the life of trade.”

“Is there a moral to your story, Mr. Dominie?”

“Take it or leave it,” said I amiably.

“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 creche 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: