"So it wasn't an idle tale: they did find it, really!" breathed Miss Hopkins, staring with all her eyes. And I knew with great certainty why _she_ had come to Hynds House that afternoon. "Forgotten all these many years, and now here, like the dead come to life!" murmured Mrs. Haile, abstractedly. "How strange!" "It was said he bought it for his mother, because it looked so like himself as a child," said Miss Hopkins. Then she remembered her duty, held up two fingers before her eyes, and squinted through them critically: "Charming, but don't you think the pose strained? It's an example of eighteenth-century work, placid enough, but it lacks that plastic, fluidic serenity, that divine new touch of truth, that is revivifying art since the great Rodin lighted the torch anew." Heaven knows what else she said. It sounded like a paper on art to me, and I have a terror of papers on art. They are, Alicia informs me, purple piffle. Yet Alicia drank in every word Miss Hopkins uttered, though the dimple came and went in her cheek. "You seem interested in art, Miss Gaines." Having torn the poor little peasant Love to tatters, Miss Hopkins descended to us groundlings. "I don't always seem to know what art is," admitted Alicia, dovelike. The lady who "moved among us clothed in white samite" smiled encouragingly. "That is because you are really little more than a child," she said kindly. "When you begin to _grow_, you will improve your mind." Alicia puckered her brows. "Ah, but I'm Irish!" she said, seriously, "and the Irish hate to have to improve their minds. I imagine it takes an able-bodied mind to stand intensive cultivation," she added, guilelessly. Miss Hopkins smiled: it was a masterpiece, that smile! "But why, may I ask, did you choose such a situation for the statue?" she inquired critically. "Now, _I_ should never dream of tucking it in such an out-of-the-way place!" The pucker came back to Alicia's brow. "Shouldn't you?" she wondered. "I shall make a point of mentioning that to Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, if you don't mind. You see, he chose that spot, and we rather like it, ourselves." Miss Hopkins stopped dead short, and Mrs. Haile started in spite of herself. Evidently, the situation was beyond them. Didn't we _know_? How much had Judge Gatchell seen fit to tell us? Alicia had dropped a bomb-shell that before night would detonate in every house in Hyndsville. They haven't very much to talk about in small towns, except one another, and when a plump mouse of gossip frisks about whisking his tail, why, it is cat nature to pounce upon it. "Mr. Jelnik!" said Miss Hopkins, with an accent. "Oh, I see. Well--he is a neighbor, of course. Certainly if Mr. Jelnik selected that particular spot for the statue--he of all people has the best right to do so--and to have his wishes considered." "Of course. He has lived abroad, and seen everything of art there is to see," Alicia agreed, placidly. Which wasn't at all what Miss Hopkins meant.