Georgiana was a nice little girl that just then came running across the garden,—William Henry’s sister, as I learned afterwards.
Just then Aunt Phebe stepped to the door again.
“Here are two hungry travellers,” said Uncle Jacob, “and one of us is bashful.”
“Well,” said Aunt Phebe, very cheerily, “if anybody is hungry, this is just the right place. How do you do, sir? Come right in. We live so out of the way we ’re always glad of company. Father, can’t you introduce your friend?”
“Well—no—I can’t,” said he. “But I guess he’s brother to the President!”
I said my name was Fry.
Aunt Phebe said her father had a cousin that married a Fry, and asked what my mother’s maiden name was. I told her my mother was a Young, and that I was named for my father and mother both,—Silas Young Fry.
I heard a tittering overhead, behind a pair of blinds, where I guessed some girls were peeping through. And afterwards, when I was sitting on the piazza, I heard one tell another, not thinking I was within hearing, that a young fry had come to supper.
When we all sat round the table the girls seemed full of tickle, which they tried to hide,—and one of them asked me,—I think it was Hannah Jane,—with a very sober face,—
“Mr. Fry, will you take some fried fish?”