'The names that were given us at the font?' said Jasmine.
'Yes; your baptismal names—your real names.'
'I 'll say them off fast enough,' said Jasmine. 'There's Jasmine, that's me; there 's Gentian, meaning the little gray-eyed girl in the corner; there's Rose, who always will be and can be nothing but Rose; there's Hollyhock; there's Delphinium. Delphinium is hard to say, but Delphy is quite easy.'
'And I suppose you think,' said their father in his half-humorous, half-serious voice, 'that you were really baptised by those names?'
'Why, of course, Dumpy Dad!' cried Hollyhock.
'Well, I must undeceive you, my dear Flower Girls. Your mother and I took a notion to have you baptised by certain names and called by others. Jasmine is really Lucy; Gentian is Margaret; Hollyhock, your real name is Jacqueline; Rose of the Garden is, however, really Rose; and Delphinium was baptised Dorothy.'
'Well, that is wonderful!' exclaimed Hollyhock. 'I must write down the names before they escape my memory. Give me a bit of paper and a pencil, Daddy Dumps, that I may write down at once our true church names.'
'Here you are, Hollyhock,' said Lennox; 'and do not forget that in the eyes of your step-aunt you are five little girls, not flowers.'
'In the eyes of the old horror,' whispered Hollyhock, who felt much excited at the change in the names.
'I wonder now,' said Gentian when Hollyhock's task was finished, and she passed her scribble to her father to see—'I wonder whether there is a similar mistake in the names of our cousins—or brothers, as they really are to us.'