"----And so," ended the story, "St. George slew the dragon."

A great sigh, long drawn and sibilant, which for the last five minutes
had been swelling 57 little thoraxes, burst out and filled the space of
the lecture hall at the Museum of Fine Arts.

"O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!" said 27 little girls.

"Aw-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w, gosh!" said 30 little boys. "Say, Mis' Cronan,
there wasn't no real dragon, was they?" A shock-headed youngster pushed
his way to the platform where Mrs. Mary C. Cronan, professional story
teller, stood smiling and wistfully looked up at her. "They wasn't no
really dragon, was they?"

"'Course they was a dragon! Whadd'ye think the man wanted to paint the
picture for if there wasn't a dragon? Certn'y there was a dragon. I
leave it to Mis' Cronan if there wasn't."

Steering a narrow course between fiction and truth, Mrs. Cronan told her
class that she thought there certainly must have been a dragon or the
picture wouldn't have been painted.

It was at one of the regular morning story hours at the Museum of Fine
Arts, a department opened three years ago at the museum by Mrs. Cronan
and Mrs. Laura Scales, a department which has become so popular that now
hundreds of children a week are entertained, children from the public
playgrounds and from the settlement houses.

On this particular day it was children from the Bickford street