“Well, it would make it one if you had her christened so, you see.”
“I was thinking of making so bold as to call her ‘Annie’, and to ask you to stand for her, ma’am.”
“And so I will, with pleasure. But don’t call her Annie; we’ve got so many Annies in the parish already it’s quite confusing—and so many Whites too. We should have to say ‘Annie White on the hill’ every time we spoke of her. I’m always mixing them up as it is. Don’t call her Annie, Mrs White, Lilac’s far better. Ask your husband what he thinks of it.”
“Oh! Jem, he’ll think as I do, ma’am,” said Mrs White at once; “it isn’t Jem.”
“Who is it, then? If you both like the name it can’t matter to anyone else.”
“Well, ma’am,” said Mrs White hesitatingly, as she took her child from Mrs Leigh, and rocked it gently in her arms, “they’ll all say down below in the village, as how it’s a fancy sort of a name, and maybe when she grows up they’ll laugh at her for it. I shouldn’t like to feel as how I’d given her a name to be made game of.”
But Mrs Leigh was much too pleased with her fancy to give it up, and she smilingly overcame this objection and all others. It was a pretty, simple, and modest-sounding name, she said, with nothing in it that could be made laughable. It was short to say, and above all it had the advantage of being uncommon; as it was, so many mothers had desired the honour of naming their daughters after the rector’s wife, that the number of “Annies” was overwhelming, but there certainly would not be two “Lilac Whites” in the village. In short, as Mrs White told Jem that evening, Mrs Leigh was “that set” on the name that she had to give in to her. And so it was settled; and wonderfully soon afterwards it was rumoured in the village that Mrs James White on the hill meant to call her baby “Lilac.”
This could not matter to anyone else, Mrs Leigh had said, but she was mistaken. Every mother in the parish had her opinion to offer, for there were not so many things happening, that even the very smallest could be passed over without a proper amount of discussion when neighbours met. On the whole they were not favourable opinions. It was felt that Mrs White, who had always held herself high and been severe on the follies of her friends, had now in her turn laid herself open to remark by choosing an outlandish and fanciful name for her child. Lilies, Roses, and even Violets were not unknown in Danecross, but who had ever heard of Lilac?
Mrs Greenways said so, and she had a right to speak, not only because she lived at Orchards Farm, which was the biggest in the parish, but because her husband was Mrs White’s brother. She said it at all times and in all places, but chiefly at “Dimbleby’s”, for if you dropped in there late in the afternoon you were pretty sure to find acquaintances, eager to hear and tell news; and this was specially the case on Saturday, which was shopping day.
Dimbleby’s was quite a large shop, and a very important one, for there was no other in the village; it was rather dark, partly because the roof was low-pitched, and partly because of the wonderful number and variety of articles crammed into it, so that it would have puzzled anyone to find out what Dimbleby did not sell. The air was also a little thick to breathe, for there floated in it a strange mixture, made up of unbleached calico, corduroy, smockfrocks, boots, and bacon. All these articles and many others were to be seen piled up on shelves or counters, or dangling from the low beams overhead; and, lately, there had been added to the stock a number of small clocks, stowed away out of sight. Their hasty ceaseless little voices sounded in curious contrast to the slowness of things in general at Dimbleby’s: “Tick-tack, tick-tack,—Time flies, time flies”, they seemed to be saying over and over again. Without effect, for at Dimbleby’s time never flew; he plodded along on dull and heavy feet, and if he had wings at all he dragged them on the ground. You had only to look at the face of the master of the shop to see that speed was impossible to him, and that he was justly known as the slowest man in the parish both in speech and action. This was hardly considered a failing, however, for it had its advantages in shopping; if he was slow himself, he was quite willing that others should be so too, and to stand in unmoved calm while Mrs Jones fingered a material to test its quality, or Mrs Wilson made up her mind between a spot and a sprig. It was therefore a splendid place for a bit of talk, for he was so long in serving, and his customers were so long in choosing, that there was an agreeable absence of pressure, and time to drink a cup of gossip down to its last drop of interest.