“Yes. Whistle it for me right now, please, Alec!”
“I guess not.—To think how I’ve been Elizabething you all this time!”
“I’ve never minded your way of saying it—nor Kitty’s; it didn’t sound so very hard to live up to. But when Aunt Lucinda used to say it, in a particular sort of tone she has, it was—depressing. You couldn’t say Blue Bonnet that way, could you?”
“Doesn’t that remain to be seen?” Alec laughed.
The new, or rather the old, name spread like wildfire among Blue Bonnet’s especial friends—Kitty, like Alec, declaring it far more appropriate to its owner than the more formal Elizabeth.
“Oh, Blue Bonnet,” she asked one afternoon a few days later, “had your friend Mrs. Prior to tea lately?”
“No.”
“Being such an intimate friend, of course you know she’s sick?”
“Kitty, don’t be horrid!—No, I didn’t know it.”
“Papa doesn’t think she’s going to get well. He says he’s never seen anyone more anxious not to.”