But Marianne shook her golden mane in positive negation.
"I couldn't," she said, "not possibly. But I'll call you Mr. Val, if you like; it's pittier than your real name."
"Very well, then, Mr. Val it shall be," answered the Count, smiling broadly at the very English sobriquet bestowed upon him. "Who have you been gathering all those flowers for?"
"They's for my Popsey; it's his buffday. Do you know how old he is, Mr. Val? I guess he must be most a hundred."
To which Mr. Val replied with a laugh; but Marianne was no whit abashed.
"I think so," she went on, seating herself on a low garden bench that stood under a spreading ash-tree, and beginning to sort out the flowers as they lay upon her lap. "I think so, 'cause he's got so many grey hairs, more than I can count. When I was a little girl"—with great disdain—"I used to pull 'em out, till Sarah said ten new ones came to each old one's funeral. Then I asked Lammy the other day if she thought Popsey was nearly a hundred; but she only laughed. Does you know Lammy, Mr. Val?" she queried, abruptly.
"Oh, but that isn't a real name, you know," protested Vladimir, diplomatically; "that might be any creature's name—a dog's, or a cat's."
"Oh, no, it couldn't," cried the child, eagerly, "'cause it's a person's—a grown up's, you see. It isn't her very own, own name; but that's too long, so I just calls her Lammy."
"And what is her very own own name?" asked Mellikoff, idly, taking up a large white marguerite from Mimi's store, and carelessly stripping off its petals, his mind unconsciously repeating the old formula, "she loves me—she loves me not." The child's voice fell with startling distinctness across the morning stillness, and shattered Vladimir's sentiment with a straight, keen blow.
"Her very own name," said Marianne, slowly, and taking great pains with her syllables, "is Mademoiselle Lamien—Mademoiselle Adèle Lamien."