ement with Percy and Claude, leaving
the rest of the party to settle themselves round the kitchen fire, roast
chestnuts, eat oranges and apples, smoke, and drink the various drinks
that became their ages and tastes.

"And what's Jenny going to call herself on the stage?" asked Mr. Vergoe.

"What _does_ the man mean?" said Mrs. Raeburn.

"Well, she must have a stage name. Raeburn is too long."

"It's no longer than Vergoe," argued Mrs. Raeburn, looking at Lilli.

"Oh, but she already had a stage name--so to speak," explained the old
man proudly. "What's Jenny's second name?"

"Pearl," said Mrs. Raeburn.

"Oh, mother, you needn't go telling everybody."

"There you are," said Charlie, who had waited for this moment fourteen
years. "There you are; I told you she wouldn't thank you for it when you
would give it her. Pearl! Whoever heard? Tut-tut!"

"Why shouldn't she call herself Jenny Pearl--Miss Jenny Pearl?" said Mr.
Vergoe. "If it isn't a good Christian name, it's a very showy stage
name, as it were--or wait a bit--what about Jenny Vere? There was a
queen or something called Jennivere--no now, I come to think of it, that
was Guinevere."

"I can't think whatever on earth she wants to call herself anything
different from what she is," persisted the mother.

"Well, I don't know either, but it's done. Even Lilli here, she spells
her first name differently--L-i-double l-i, and Miss Vaughan here, I'll
bet Vaughan ain't her own name--in a manner of speaking."

"Yes it is," said Miss Vaughan, pursing up her mouth so that it looked
like a red flannel button.

But Mr. Vergoe was right--Miss Eileen Vaughan in Camberwell was Nellie
Jaggs. Jenny soon found that out when they lived together, and wrote a
postcard to Mr. Vergoe to tell him so.

"But why must she be Jenny Pearl?" asked Mrs. Raeburn. "Although, mind,
I don't say it isn't a very good name," she added, remembering it was
her own conjunction.

"It's done," Mr. Vergoe insisted. "More flowery--I suppose--so to
speak."

So Jenny Raeburn became Jenny Pearl, and her health was drunk and her
success wished.

A few weeks afterward she stood on Euston platform, with a queer
feeling, half-way between sickness and breathlessness, and was met by
Madame Aldavini with Eileen and two older girls, and bundled into a
reserved compartment. Very soon she was waving a handkerchief to her
mother and May, already scarcely visible in the murk of a London fog.
Life had begun.