'Of course not,' said Aunt Annie; 'we know their stories aren't true, so they don't deceive us.'
'But you always know my stories aren't true, too,' objected Prudence Jane; 'so I don't deceive you, either.'
'Prudence Jane,' said Aunt Annie, 'I shan't argue with you. You are a very naughty little girl. I sometimes think that you don't belong to us at all; you're so different from your brothers.'
This was true. All the other little Pipers had been simple, virtuous children, with imaginations under perfect control—'a remarkable family' everybody had said, until the Pipers became quite complacent about themselves. This was why Prudence Jane seemed like such a judgment upon them. They had waited long and patiently, as Aunt Annie put it, for Providence to see fit to send them a dear little girl to inherit her grandmothers' names—and they received Prudence Jane. Had she appeared at an earlier date, or had there been another girl in the family, she might have escaped either the Prudence or the Jane. But for fifteen years little masculine Pipers had arrived in the household with unbroken regularity, and been named, one by one, after all the available grandfathers and uncles. For the last one, indeed, there had not been even a cousin left, and he had been christened by common consent Peter Piper. And still the grandmothers waited.
From the moment, therefore, when bluff old Doctor Jones looked in upon a parlor full of aunts, and announced that it was 'a girl at last, by Jove,' there had been no choice left for Prudence Jane. The only point discussed in the solemn family conclave was as to whether she should not be Jane Prudence.
'Oh, for mercy's sake, call the poor little kid Jurisprudence, and be done with it,' said a flippant uncle—and that had settled it. Prudence Jane was duly entered at the end of the list in the middle of the Family Bible, and her career began.
Through eight years she was just unmitigated Prudence Jane,—not a syllable of it could ever be omitted lest one grandmother or the other be slighted,—and then suddenly one day she decided that it was a combination no longer to be borne. She hated her name with all her little soul; therefore she would discard it and take another. This sounded simple, but there were, in fact, several complications. The most important was Aunt Annie. Never a really progressive spirit, in this matter of names Aunt Annie showed herself to be an out-and-out stand-patter.
'You wish that you had been called Gwendolin?' she echoed in horror, as she combed out the pale yellow hair at bed-time. 'Why, Prudence Jane, I'm ashamed of you. Gwendolin is a very silly name indeed, and you have two such noble ones. I only hope that you will grow up to be like the beautiful grandmammas who gave them to you'—which was a truly lovely little bit of optimism on Aunt Annie's part.
II
Prudence Jane did not consult Aunt Annie further. That very night, however, staring up into the darkness from her little white bed, she decided upon a new combination. And when the Reverend Mr. Sanders came up to her the next day after Sunday School, and inquired kindly what little girl this was, Prudence Jane was quite prepared to tell him, with the transparent look which so frightened dear old Grandma Piper, that it was Imogen Rose.