"Sylvia," he said at length. Sylvia, I knew, was the name of his sister.
"Not like that name!" said the child, more prophetically than she knew.
The Freak apologised and suggested Mary Ann, which so pleased his patroness that she immediately lodged an order for twelve more cows. The artist executed the commission with unflagging zeal and care, Miss Welwyn following every stroke of the pencil with critical interest and numbering off the animals as they were created.
About this time Master Percy Welwyn, who had fallen into a fitful slumber, woke up and loudly expressed a desire for a commodity which he described as "kike." His mother supplied his needs from a string-bag. Refreshed and appeased, he slept anew.
Meanwhile the herd of cows had been completed, and The Freak was, immediately set to work to find names for each. The appellation Mary Ann had established a fatal precedent, for The Freak's employer ruthlessly demanded a double title for each of Mary Ann's successors. Appealed to for a personal contribution, she shook her small head firmly: to her, evidently, in common with the rest of her sex, destructive criticism of male endeavour was woman's true sphere in life. But when the despairing Freak, after submitting Mabel-Maud, Emily-Kate, Elizabeth-Jane, and Maria-Theresa, made a second pathetic appeal for assistance, the lady so far relented as to suggest "Seener Angler"--a form of address which, though neither bovine nor feminine, seemed to me to come naturally enough from the daughter of a Don, but caused Mr. and Mrs. Welwyn to exchange glances.
At last the tale was completed,--I think the last cow was christened "Bishop's Stortford," through which station we were passing at the moment,--and the exhausted Freak smilingly laid down his pencil. But no one who has ever embarked upon that most comprehensive and interminable of enterprises, the entertainment of a child, will be surprised to hear that Miss Welwyn now laid a pudgy fore-finger upon the first cow, and enquired:--
"Where that cow going?"
"Cambridge," answered The Freak after consideration.
"Next one?"
"London."