“And a very good name, too,” said Mrs. Puffle.
“I haven’t a word to say against it,” said Mr. Brown. “I wish I could say quite as much as to that other name,—Josephine de Montmorenci.”
“But Maryanne Puffle would be quite unendurable on a title-page,” said the owner of the unfortunate appellation.
“I don’t see it,” said Mr. Brown doggedly.
“Ever so many have done the same,” said Mrs. Puffle. “There’s Boz.”
“Calling yourself Boz isn’t like calling yourself Josephine de Montmorenci,” said the editor, who could forgive the loss of beauty, but not the assumed grandeur of the name.
“And Currer Bell, and Jacob Omnium, and Barry Cornwall,” said poor Polly Puffle, pleading hard for her falsehood.
“And Michael Angelo Titmarsh! That was quite the same sort of thing,” said Mrs. Puffle.
Our editor tried to explain to them that the sin of which he now complained did not consist in the intention,—foolish as that had been,—of putting such a name as Josephine de Montmorenci on the title-page, but in having corresponded with him,—with him who had been so willing to be a friend,—under a false name. “I really think you ought to have told me sooner,” he said.
“If we had known you had been a friend of Charles’s we would have told you at once,” said the young wife.