Blythe Halliday’s Voyage
CHAPTER I
THE CROW’S NEST
“You never told me how you happened to name her Blythe.”
The two old friends, Mr. John DeWitt and Mrs. Halliday, were reclining side by side in their steamer-chairs, lulled into a quiescent mood by the gentle, scarcely perceptible, motion of the vessel. It was an exertion to speak, and Mrs. Halliday replied evasively, “Do you like the name?”
“For Blythe,—yes. But I don’t know another girl who could carry it off so well. Tell me how it happened.”
Then Blythe’s mother reluctantly gathered herself together for a serious effort, and said: “It was the old Scotch nurse who did it. She called her ‘a blythe lassie’ before she was three days old. We had 4 been hesitating between Lucretia for Charles’s mother and Hannah for mine, and we compromised on Blythe!”