He drew nearer by as far as he could slowly spread his feet twice.
"I know—now—she went to get two glasses from the dresser to take to my grandfather and that gentleman." He felt voluble from the mere ease of the answer. But she affected to have heard nothing, and he was obliged to speak again.
"Now—why, I know a doll that shuts up her eyes every time she lies down."
The doll at hand was promptly extended on the little lap and with a click went into sudden sleep while the mother rocked it. He could have ventured nothing more after this pricking of his inflated little speech. A moment he stood, suffering moderately, and then would have edged cautiously away with the air of wishing to go, only at this point, without seeming to see him, she chirped to him quite winningly in a soft, warm little voice, and there was free talk at once. He manfully let her tell of all her silly little presents before talking of his own. He even listened about the doll, whose name Santa Claus had thoughtfully painted on the box in which she came; it was a French name, "Fragile."
Then, being come to names, they told their own. Hers, she said, was Lillian May.
"But your uncle, now—that gentleman—he called you Nancy when you came in." He waited for her solving of this.
"Oh, Uncle Doctor doesn't know it yet, what my real name is. They call me Nancy, but that's a very disagreeable name, so I took Lillian May for my real name. But I tell very few persons," she added, importantly. Here he was at home; he knew about choosing a good name.
"Did you give up the gold-piece you found?" he asked. But this puzzled her.
"'A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches,'" he reminded her. "Didn't you find a gold-piece like Ben Holt did?"
But it seemed she had never found anything. Indeed, once she had lost a dime, even on the way to spending it for five candy bananas and five jaw-breakers. Plainly she had chosen her good name without knowing of the case of Ben Holt. Then he promised to show her something the most wonderful in all the world, which she would never believe without seeing it, and led her to where the candy cane towered to their shoulders in its corner. He saw at once that it meant less to her than it did to him.