e had ever seen, and so she worshipped him
from afar.

Besides, he had the _grandest_ name! Why had she never heard of Jerome
when she gave Tom the name of Dionysius Ulysses Humphrey Llewelyn?
Maybe it wasn't too late yet. Oh, she had forgotten--how could she ever
forget! And the crimson blood mounted her cheeks as she remembered that
unhappy day in the long ago when she had marched up one side of the
street and down the other and told the people that her name was Tabitha
Catt. Tom and the Carsons and Miss Brooks had been very kind to her
after that dreadful affair, and when she had gone back to school the
children never once referred to the beautiful name that had been so
ruthlessly snatched away from her, but they played with her just as if
nothing had happened and even spoke the hateful word, Tabitha, with such
a gentleness that it lost some of its sting. Carrie adopted Tom's pet
name for her, so in time others of the children had taken it up and she
was more frequently Puss than Tabitha; for all of which she was deeply
grateful. Still, she could not help wishing that Tom's name could have
been Jerome. That did sound so splendid! But Tom in her eyes was just as
nice as Jerome Vane, even if he was solemn and shy while Jerome was
laughing and debonair.

The new scholar had been in school just one week when one rainy day at
recess while the children were playing quietly inside the building, as
the weather was too forbidding to permit the usual games in the yard,
Tabitha's sharp ears caught a snatch of conversation among the boys busy
drawing horrible cartoons on the blackboard, and one of the speakers was
her idol, Jerome Vane.

"Who's that black-haired kid that signs her name as 'T. C.' in the
arithmetic class?" the new boy asked.

"Oh, that's Tabitha Catt."

"Tabitha Catt! What a funny name!" Jerome exclaimed; and Tabitha,
darting a swift glance at him from the corner of her eye, saw that he
was looking at her with an amused smile on his lips.

"Ain't it, though? She don't like it a bit, and took a different one;
but her father made her take it all back. She's teacher's pet, so we
daren't tease her."

"Huh!" declared the other with a swagger of bravado, "'twould take more
than that to make me stop teasing her if I wanted to."

"Guess you don't know Miss Brooks very well."

"I don't care a hang about Miss Brooks. I'd tease if I wanted to."

"I dare you!"

"Taken!"

Tabitha was almost too shocked to mo