"Oh, mother, you needn't go telling everybody."
"There you are," said Charlie, who had waited for this moment fourteen years. "There you are; I told you she wouldn't thank you for it when you would give it her. Pearl! Whoever heard? Tut-tut!"
"Why shouldn't she call herself Jenny Pearl—Miss Jenny Pearl?" said Mr. Vergoe. "If it isn't a good Christian name, it's a very showy stage name, as it were—or wait a bit—what about Jenny Vere? There was a queen or something called Jennivere—no now, I come to think of it, that was Guinevere."
"I can't think whatever on earth she wants to call herself anything different from what she is," persisted the mother.
"Well, I don't know either, but it's done. Even Lilli here, she spells her first name differently—L-i-double l-i, and Miss Vaughan here, I'll bet Vaughan ain't her own name—in a manner of speaking."
"Yes it is," said Miss Vaughan, pursing up her mouth so that it looked like a red flannel button.
But Mr. Vergoe was right—Miss Eileen Vaughan in Camberwell was Nellie Jaggs. Jenny soon found that out when they lived together, and wrote a postcard to Mr. Vergoe to tell him so.
"But why must she be Jenny Pearl?" asked Mrs. Raeburn. "Although, mind, I don't say it isn't a very good name," she added, remembering it was her own conjunction.
"It's done," Mr. Vergoe insisted. "More flowery—I suppose—so to speak."
So Jenny Raeburn became Jenny Pearl, and her health was drunk and her success wished.