uld reproduce what
she seemed to see, the world would be grateful to her. She would give it
a face which it would never make an end of discussing, which should be
in sculpture what the face of Mona Lisa is in painting. It would be the
face of a man whom one jury would hang upon the merest suspicion; for
whom another would return a verdict of "not guilty" no matter what the
nature of his proved crimes; and whether the face was beautiful or
hideous would be a matter of dispute for the ages.

Upon arriving at No. 17 McBurney Place, and having climbed two flights
of stairs, the door of her studio was opened before she could lay hand
to the knob, and a very small boy with very big eyes, and no more flesh
upon his bones than served to distinguish him from a living skeleton,
appeared on the threshold, smiling, you may say, from head to foot. He
was dressed in a blue suit with bobbed tails and a double row of bright
brass buttons down the front, and when she had gathered him from the
gutter in which he had reached to his present stunted stature, a child
half gone in pneumonia, he had told her that his name, his whole name,
was "Bubbles" and nothing but "Bubbles."

"Good morning, Miss Barbara," he said; "the plumber's bin and gone, and
the feller from the hardware store has swore hell be around before noon
to fix the new knobs in the doors."

"Good!" said Barbara. "Well done, Bubbles."

And she passed into the studio, wondering why a little face all knotting
with smiles, affection, and the pleasure of commands lovingly received
and well obeyed, should remind her of that other face, massive,
sardonic, lost, satanic, which had looked up into hers across the
battered tin cup on the top of a battered street-organ. She turned to a
little clay head that she had made recently and for which Bubbles had
sat; touched it here and there, stepped back from it, turned her own
head to the left, to the right, and even, such was the concentration of
her mood, showed between her red lips the tip of a still redder tongue.
But no matter what she did to test and undo her first impression there
persisted between the two faces a certain likeness, though in just what
this resemblance consisted she was unable to say.

"Bubbles," she said, "you were telling me about beggars the other day
and how much they make, and how rich some of them are. Did you ever run
across one that sells shoe-laces, plays a hand-organ, and hasn't got
any legs?"

"Sure," s