ould have been something else if I'd
had my way about it. Unless babies are named pretty names I think their
folks ought to wait until they can pick out their own names. Grandpa
named me--all of us but Gail and Allee. If I just hadn't been born for
two weeks longer maybe I'd have had a pretty name, too, for grandpa died
when I was only thirteen days old. You see, grandpa was a minister--papa
used to be a minister, too--and he never had any other children but
papa, so he didn't get a chance to do much naming in his own family.
Papa named Gail; her real name is Abigail. And then grandpa came to live
with us. He liked Bible names, so the rest of us were picked out of the
Bible--except Allee, and she wasn't born then. Mamma named her."

She paused for breath, and the amused, amazed preacher found opportunity
to murmur, politely, "But I am sure you all have good names--"

"Oh, yes, they are good enough! The trouble is, they don't fit, except
Hope's. She is our sunbeam, always doing and saying something pretty,
and _meaning_ it, too. Now, Gail isn't a gale at all, but just the
bestest kind of a sister; while Faith is usu'lly cross as two sticks
unless things go just as she wants them; and Cherry doesn't stand around
on corners d'livering _tracks_ and worn-out clo's to the needy poor,
like Charity always does in the pictures. But mine is the worst misfit.
Still, I'm thankful it isn't any worse. Just s'posing I had Irene for a
middle name--that's my favorite, and Olive is Hope's choice--then my
'nitials would have spelled P. I. G. and hers H. O. G.; and the school
children would never have called us anything else. I know, 'cause they
call Nort Thomas Nettie. His whole name is Norton Edwin Thomas, but he
always signed his 'nitials on his 'rithmetic papers, and the boys took
to calling him Nettie. It makes it all the worse 'cause he is a regular
sissy boy. Have you got any children?"

"No."

"Well, I s'pose you will have some day, and if I was you, I'd name them
something pretty, or else wait till they got big enough to choose for
themselves. And whatever you do, don't let your church people raise
'em."

"Wh--at?"

"That's just what they'll _try_ to do. They did with our family, and
when they got us all spoiled, they said we were the worst children in
town--that ministers' children always were. Why, Mrs. Waddler--her name
is Wardlaw, but she is so big and fat that I call her Waddler--that's
her over there feeding cake to t