“That's right, Aunt Ju-ju, argue it out!” she advised.
Miss Trueman winced. She had never accustomed herself to those senseless monosyllables that parodied her name; nor could she understand the frame of mind that found them preferable to the comfortable “Aunt Jule” of the old days.
“Ju-ju!” Strips of unwholesome flesh-colored paste, sugar-sprinkled, dear to her childish heart but loathed by a maturer palate, rose to her mind. There had been another haunting recollection: for months she had been unable to define it perfectly, though it had always brought a thrill of disgust with its vague appeal. One day she caught it and told them.
“It was that dreadful creature Mr. Barnum exhibited,” she declared, “that we didn't allow the children to go to see—Jo-jo, the Dog-faced Boy! You remember?”
Their cold horror, briefly expressed, had shown her that she had trespassed too far on their indulgence, and she spoke of it no more, but the memory rankled.
“It's so strange you don't see how cunning it is,” Carolyn complained; “everybody does it now. The whole Chatworth family have those names, Aunt Ju, and it is the dearest thing to hear the old doctor call Captain Arthur 'Ga-ga.' You know that dignified sister with the lovely silvery hair? Well, they all call her 'Looty.' And nobody thinks of Hunter Chatworth's real name—he's always 'Toto.'”
“And he has three children!”
Miss Trueman sighed; the constitution of the modern family amazed her endlessly. Ga-ga, indeed!
“Do the children call him Toto, too?” she demanded, with an attempt at sarcasm, a conversational form to which she was by nature a stranger.
“Oh, I don't know about that,” Carolyn answered carelessly. “I suppose not. Though plenty of children do, you know. Mrs. Ranger's little girl always calls her mother Lou.”