.

Yet when the flu epidemic returned upon us, she stood by, efficient,
deft, and gallant, though still imperious, until the day when she
clashed her lath-and-tinsel sword of theory against the tempered steel
of the Little Red Doctor's experience. Said the Little Red Doctor (who
was pressed for time at the moment): "Take orders. Or get out. Which?"

She straightened like a soldier. "Tell me what you want done."

At the end of the onset, when he gave her her release from volunteer
service, she turned shining eyes upon him. "I've never been so treated
in my life! You're a bully and a brute."

"You're a brick," retorted the Little Red Doctor. "I'll send for you
next time Our Square needs help."

"I'll come," said she, and they shook hands solemnly.

Thereafter Our Square felt a little more lenient toward her
ministrations, and even those of us who least approved her activities
felt the stir of radiance and color which she brought with her.

On a day when the local philanthropy market was slack, and Miss Holland,
seated in the Bonnie Lassie's front window, was maturing some new and
benign outrage upon our sensibilities, she called out to the sculptress
at work on a group:

"There's a queer man making queer marks on your sidewalk."

"That's Peter Quick Banta. He's a fellow artist."

"And another man, young, with a big, maney head like an amiable lion;
quite a beautiful lion. He's making more marks."

"Let him make all he wants."

"They're waving their arms at each other. At least the queer man is. I
think they're going to fight."

"They won't. It's only an academic discussion on technique."

"Who is the young one?"

"He's the ruin of what might have been a big artist."

"No! Is he? What did it? Drink?"

"Does he look it?"

The window-gazer peered more intently at the debaters below. "It's a
peculiar face. Awfully interesting, though. He's quite poorly dressed.
Does he need money? Is that what's wrong?"

"That's it, Bobbie," returned the Bonnie Lassie with a half-smile. "He
needs the money."

The rampant philanthropist stirred within Miss Roberta Holland's fatally
well-meaning soul. "Would it be a case where I could help? I'd love to
put a real artist back on his feet. Are you sure he's real?"

On the subject of Art, the Bonnie Lassie is never anything but sincere
and direct, however much she may play her trickeries with lesser
interests, such as life and love and human fate.

"No; I'm not. If he w