“Countess, do you mean to cut yourself off from all your friends?” asked David, with a mixed feeling of perplexity and pity. “I cannot understand why you should do so.”
“‘Friends!’” she replied, with an indescribable intonation. “I fancy I shall take them all with me. Do as I bid thee, David, and trouble not thyself to understand me.”
David felt silenced, and asked no more questions.
“Rudolph must have an English name,” said Countess abruptly. “Let him be called Ralph henceforth. That is the English version of his own name, and he will soon grow accustomed to it.”
“What is he to call you?” asked Christian.
“What he pleases,” was the answer.
What it pleased Rudolph to do was to copy the other children, and say “Mother;” but he applied the term impartially alike to Countess and to Christian, till the latter took him aside, and suggested that it would be more convenient if he were to restrict the term to one of them.
“You see,” she said, “if you call us both by one name, we shall never know which of us you mean.”
“Oh, it does not matter,” answered Master Rudolph with imperial unconcern. “Either of you could button me up and tie my shoes. But if you like, I’ll call you Christie.”
“I think it would be better if you did,” responded Christian with praiseworthy gravity.