" Out of the joint takings grew a bank
account. Eventually Peter Quick Banta came to me about the boy's
education.
"He's a swell," said Peter Quick Banta. "Look at that face! I don't care
if he did crawl outa the gutter. I'm an artist and I reco'nize
aristocracy when I see it. And I want him brung up accordin'."
So I inducted the youngster into such modest groves of learning as an
old, half-shelved pedagogue has access to, and when the Bonnie Lassie
came to Our Square to make herself and us famous with her tiny bronzes
(this was before she had captured, reformed, and married Cyrus the
Gaunt), I took him to her and he fell boyishly and violently in love
with her beauty and her genius alike, all of which was good for his
developing soul. She arranged for his art training.
"But you know, Dominie," she used to say, wagging her head like a
profound and thoughtful bird; "this is all very foolish and shortsighted
on my part. Five years from now that gutter-godling of yours will be
doing work that will make people forget poor little me and my poor
little figurines."
To which I replied that even if it were true, instead of the veriest
nonsense, about Julien Tenney or any one else ever eclipsing her, she
would help him just the same!
But five years from then Julien had gone over to the Philistines.
II
Justly catalogued, Roberta Holland belonged to the idle rich.
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