“Much worse, eh?”
“I should say so!”
“I take it all back, Gorgas,” he dropped his bantering tone, and shook his head so humbly, and smiled so pleasantly that she was soon mollified. “We’re both named after families, I see—the kind of families that have streets named for them; but that ‘Lafayette’ of mine is worse than—worse than even ‘Keyser’!” Gorgas laughed; one’s own name is never funny, but how comic are other persons’! “When Lafayette paid Mount Airy the great visit in 1825,” he explained, “he made a very formal call on my grandmother—kissed her hand, I believe—well, she gave up the remainder of her life to bragging about it, and she hoped to perpetuate the event by naming me ‘Lafayette.’ Wasn’t that a dreadful calamity to put upon a young infant?”
“Awful!” she agreed heartily.
“While she lived I had to be ‘Allen L. Blynn,’” he smiled ruefully, “But ‘Lafayette’ died with her, bless her good old soul. At college when they asked me what the ‘L’ stood for, I used to say, ‘Just L.’ You don’t know how scared I was lest that crowd should discover all about that kiss-the-hand business!”
The middleman and his group came up just then and joked obviously about their prowess as players.
“Getting points from Gorgas?” inquired the middleman. “She took the junior cup, you know, and against some smart boys, too. At least they thought they were smart.”
The middleman had won both sets that afternoon, and could afford to expand. “You know, you tutors ought to be tutored before you take us on again. That might make you—”
“Astuter?” suggested the professor.
His grin was not at the jest. He was thinking of Gorgas, standing erect and brown as young Pocahontas, and looking very like that famous lady. The frown had not yet gone from her eyes. She would not wear—! Bless her! He could see her years later in all the tortures and disguises that women permit themselves to indulge in, including the ugly balloon sleeves, which were already enveloping very young girls; and pyramidal high-heeled shoes; perhaps even a “bustle.”