mbing rose, fifteen hundred
dollars each, and our names, Delphine and Laura. Not a bad heritage,
with economy, good looks, and hearts to take life cheerily. Still it
is plain enough that a fifty-dollar note for the bride was not to be
despised nor overlooked. In fact, with the exception of Polly's present
of a brown earthen bowl and a pudding-stick, it was the first approach
to a wedding-gift that I had yet received. And this note was trouble the
second. But of that, by-and-by.

"Delphine!" said Laura, softly.

Some people's voices excoriate you, Laura's was soft and soothing.

"Well!"

"Don't say any more to--to Mr. Sampson about names."

"Oh, dear! hateful!"

"Delphine, be thankful it's no worse!"

"How could it be worse,--unless it were Hog-and-Hominy? I never knew
anything so utterly ridiculous! America! Columbia! Yankee-Doodle! I'd
rather it had been Abraham!"

All this I almost shouted in a passion of vexation, and Laura hastily
closed the window.

"Let me loosen your braids for you, Del," said she, quietly, taking up
my hair in her gentle way, which always had a good effect on my prancing
nerves; "let me bathe your forehead with this, dear;--now, let me tell
you something you will like."

"Oh, my heart! Laura, I wish you could! for I declare to you, that, if
it wasn't for--if it didn't----Oh, dear, dear! how I do hate that name!"

"It is not so very good a name,--that must be owned, Del. All is, you
will have to call him 'Mr. Sampson,' or 'My dear,' or 'You'; or, stay,
you might abbreviate it into Ame, Ami. Ami and Delphine!--it sounds like
a French story for youth. If I were you, I wouldn't meddle with it or
think any more about it."

"Such a name! so ridiculous!" I muttered.

"You have considered it so much and so closely, Del, that it is most
disproportionately prominent in your mind. You can put out Bunker-Hill
Monument with your little finger, if you hold it close enough to your
eye. Don't you remember what Mr. Sampson said to-night about somebody
whose mind had no perspective in it? that his shoe-ribbon was as
prominent and important as his soul? Don't go and be a goosey, Del, and
have no perspective, will you?" And Laura leaned over and kissed my
forehead, all corrugated with my pet grief.

"Well, Laura, what can be worse? I declare--almost I think, Laura, I
would rather he should have some great defect."

"Moral or physical? Gambling? one leg? one eye? lying? six fingers? How
do you me