s name was not wanted. Browny's name was Aminta Farrell.

Farrell might pass; Aminta was debated. This female Christian name had
a foreign twang; it gave dissatisfaction. Boy after boy had a try at it,
with the same effect: you could not speak the name without a pursing
of the month and a puckering of the nose, beastly to see, as one little
fellow reminded them on a day when Matey was in more than common favour,
topping a pitch of rapture, for clean bowling, first ball, middle stump
on the kick, the best bat of the other eleven in a match; and, says this
youngster, drawling, soon after the cheers and claps had subsided to
business, "Aminta."

He made it funny by saying it as if to himself and the ground, in a
subdued way, while he swung his leg on a half-circle, like a skater,
hands in pockets. He was a sly young rascal, innocently precocious
enough, and he meant no disrespect either to Browny or to Matey; but he
had to run for it, his delivery of the name being so like what was in
the breasts of the senior fellows, as to the inferiority of any Aminta
to old Matey, that he set them laughing; and Browny was on the field, to
reprove them, left of the tea-booth, with her school-mates, part of her
head under a scarlet parasol.

A girl with such a name as Aminta might not be exactly up to the
standard of old Matey, still, if he thought her so and she had spirit,
the school was bound to subscribe; and that look of hers warranted her
for taking her share in the story, like the brigand's wife loading
gnus for him while he knocks over the foremost carabineer on the
mountain-ledge below, who drops on his back with a hellish expression.

Browny was then clearly seen all round, instead of only front-face, as
on the Sunday in the park, when fellows could not spy backward after
passing. The pleasure they had in seeing her all round involved no fresh
stores of observation, for none could tell how she tied her back-hair,
which was the question put to them by a cynic of a boy, said to be
queasy with excess of sisters. They could tell that she was tall for a
girl, or tallish--not a maypole. She drank a cup of tea, and ate a slice
of bread-and-butter; no cake.

She appeared undisturbed when Matey, wearing his holiday white ducks,
and all aglow, entered the booth. She was not expected to faint, only
she stood for the foreign Aminta more than for their familiar Browny in
his presence. Not a sign of the look which had fired the school di