“Why?” she said, with her swift change from listless to alert—“why ought they? It’s a hijeous name, I think.”
“It isn’t very pretty—not near so pretty as ‘Faginia,’” said Roden, gallantly; “but there was a fellow once called Herrick who was always writing songs to ‘Julia.’”
“Oh,” said the girl, with a sudden dawning in her sombre eyes, “that’s the man wrote ‘To Daffodils’ and ‘Primroses’ and things, ain’t it?”
“That’s the man,” he said.
“Well,” she replied, slowly, “I don’t see why I ought to be called Julia. Her last name wa’n’t Herrick, ’cause he wouldn’t ’a’ written those kynder things to his sister, and a man wouldn’t ’a’ taken th’ trouble to write songs to’s wife.”
“Why?” said Roden, fixing on her his eyes, at whose blueness she began to wonder in a vague way. Thus looking out from the young man’s sunburnt, weather-marked face they reminded her of some vivid, sky-colored flower springing into sudden azure among brown summer grasses.
“Why?” he repeated. “Are all Virginian husbands so ungallant to their wives?”
“So what?” she said, contracting her level brows.
“So rude, so careless of their wives.”
“Oh, I reckon so,” she made answer. “I don’t know much ’bout men ’n’ their wives. My father’s died when I was born, an’ somehow I don’t take much to women, nor they tuh me. But I know ’nuff,” she supplemented, “to know a man ain’t goin’ to make a fuss over ’s wife.”