' to her you ought
to have names as simple and common as may be.' Why, think of what she
said when I named my last, which is just a year ago. `And what do you
think of callin' her?' says she. `Why,' says I, `I think of giving her
the name of Agnetta.' `Dear me!' says she; `whyever do you give your
girls such fine names? There's your two eldest, Isabella and Augusta;
I'd call this one Betsy, or Jane, or Sarah, or something easy to say,
and suitable.'"

"_Did_ she, now?" said both the listeners at once.

"And it's not only that," continued Mrs Greenways with a growing sound
of injury in her voice, "but she's always on at me when she gets a
chance about the way I bring my girls up. `You'd a deal better teach
her to make good butter,' says she, when I told her that Bella was
learning the piano. And when I showed her that screen Gusta worked--
lilies on blue satting, a re'lly elegant thing--she just turned her head
and says, `I'd rather, if she were a gal of mine, see her knit her own
stockings.' Those were her words, Mrs Wishing."

"Ah, well, it's easy to talk," replied Mrs Wishing soothingly, "we'll
be able to see how she'll bring up a daughter of her own now."

"I'm not saying," pursued Mrs Greenways, turning a watchful eye on Mr
Dimbleby's movements, "that Mary White haven't a perfect right to name
her child as she chooses. I'm too fair for that, I _hope_. What I do
say is, that now she's picked up a fancy sort of name like Lilac, she
hasn't got any call to be down on other people. And if me and Greenways
likes to see our girls genteel and give 'em a bit of finishing
eddication, and set 'em off with a few accomplishments, it's our own
affair and not Mary White's. And though I say it as shouldn't, you
won't find two more elegant gals than Gusta and Bella, choose where you
may."

During the last part of her speech Mrs Greenways had been poking and
squeezing her parcel of sugar into its appointed corner of her basket;
as she finished she settled it on her arm, clutched at her gown with the
other hand, and prepared to start.

"And now, as I'm in a hurry, I'll say good night, Mrs Pinhorn and Mrs
Wishing, and good night to you, Mr Dimbleby."

She rolled herself and her burden through the narrow door of the shop,
and for a moment no one spoke, while all the little clocks ticked away
more busily than ever.

"She's got enough to carry," said Mrs Pinhorn, breaking silence at
last, with a sideway nod at her ne