tuation, "how proud I was of that performance! She
didn't tell ME she objected to rag carpet!"

"No, Mother," Advena agreed, "she knew better."

They were all there in the kitchen, supporting their mother, and it
seems an opportunity to name them. Advena, the eldest, stood by the long
kitchen table washing the breakfast cups in "soft" soap and hot water.
The soft soap--Mrs Murchison had a barrelful boiled every spring in
the back yard, an old colonial economy she hated to resign--made a
fascinating brown lather with iridescent bubbles. Advena poured cupfuls
of it from on high to see the foam rise, till her mother told her for
mercy's sake to get on with those dishes. She stood before a long low
window, looking out into the garden and the light, filtering through
apple branches on her face showed her strongly featured and intelligent
for fourteen. Advena was named after one grandmother; when the next
girl came Mrs Murchison, to make an end of the matter, named it Abigail,
after the other. She thought both names outlandish and acted under
protest, but hoped that now everybody would be satisfied. Lorne came
after Advena, at the period of a naive fashion of christening the young
sons of Canada in the name of her Governor-General. It was a simple
way of attesting a loyal spirit, but with Mrs Murchison more particular
motives operated. The Marquis of Lorne was not only the deputy of the
throne, he was the son-in-law of a good woman of whom Mrs Murchison
thought more, and often said it, for being the woman she was than for
being twenty times a Queen; and he had made a metrical translation of
the Psalms, several of which were included in the revised psalter for
the use of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, from which the whole
of Knox Church sang to the praise of God every Sunday. These were
circumstances that weighed with Mrs Murchison, and she called her son
after the Royal representative, feeling that she was doing well for him
in a sense beyond the mere bestowal of a distinguished and a euphonious
name, though that, as she would have willingly acknowledged, was "well
enough in its place."

We must take this matter of names seriously; the Murchisons always did.
Indeed, from the arrival of a new baby until the important Sunday of
the christening, nothing was discussed with such eager zest and such
sustained interest as the name he should get--there was a fascinating
list at the back of the dictionary--and to the last minute