"The sailor-baby's name," Dot said proudly. "'Nosmo King Kenway.'"
"On a barn!" repeated the puzzled Neale. "Whose barn?"
When he learned that it was Mr. Stout's tobacco barn he looked rather funny and asked several other questions of the little girls.
Then he drew a sheet of paper toward him and with a pencil printed something upon it, which he passed to Agnes. She burst into laughter at once, and passed the paper on.
"What is it?" Dot asked curiously. "Is it a funny picture he's drawed?"
"It's funnier than a picture," laughed Luke, who had taken a squint at the paper. "I declare, isn't that a good one!"
"I don't think you folks are very polite," Tess said, rather haughtily, for the others were not going to show the paper to the little girls. On the sheet Neale had arranged the letters of the new baby's name as they were meant to be read—for he knew what was painted upon the inside of the doors of Mr. Stout's barn:
NO SMOKING
Ruth, however, would not let the joke go on. She took Dot up on her lap and explained kindly how the mistake had been make. For Nosmo was a pretty name; nobody could deny it. And, of course, King sounded particularly aristocratic.
Nevertheless, Dot there and then dropped the sailor-baby's fancy name, and he became Jack, to be known by that name forever more.