Miss Emmy laughingly expressed her willingness to take off her head-gear, and after arranging the roses in two yellow and brown lustre pitchers on the mantel-shelf, and laying the little bouquet beside the deep bowl of Russian cut glass that was to do duty for the christening, she followed Mrs. Pegrim upstairs.
"Why, where is the lady baby?" she asked in surprise.
"I'm letting her sleep until the last moment, and Oliver, who's dressing and fussing between his room and the kitchen's, got an eye to her. 'Lisha Potts's in there talking to him. Oliver would have 'Lisha to the naming 'cause of his being the one to open the door that night, you know." (This was as near as Satira ever allowed herself to approach the forbidden subject.) "He balked considerable, not being used to society down here at the centre, and settin' in there now he does look uncommon like a coon they had in a cage last county fair, 'n' we-all didn't tell him one of the Miss Feltons was coming, for fear he'd streak it, so you'd best stand just behind the door 'ntil he gets in.
"I'm turrible glad to see your bunnit off'n, and how you do your hair. Only a few of the daring hereabout has fixed theirs in what's called a waterfall, and those as has looks like they'd put spice bags on the back of their necks for a crick' n' they'd stuck fast. Yourn is just elegant, trickles down and hangs as easy as if there wasn't no net to gather it.
"Who all is coming to the naming? Only First Selectman Morse, little Hughey Oldys, me and you and 'Lisha and Gilbert, besides Mr. Latimer that does it. Gilbert he wanted more, but, says I, not having cleaned house I'm not ready for a charge o' the whole town 'at would come if we loosed the line, so we'd best draw it close as we can without choking ourselves, and that's how.
"No, brother hasn't told me the name yet, but I suspicion it's something choice and bookish, for though Gilbert never made out to get further'n three terms at the old Academy (that little building 'nexed behind the new one), he's always thought a sight of books. In fact, he got something of the taste from pa, who was a carpenter and the forehandedest man about naming his family in all Newfield County; he'd names for us all before he'd picked out his wife, pa had.
"You ain't never heard? Well, it come about this way: Thomas, Henry, and Gideon had been the male names among the Gilberts ever since they set foot in this land o' promise near two hundred years ago, and as they slumped down in one spot and didn't journey to speak of, with first, second, and third cousins all clinging to those names, things got mixed pretty well.
"Father, he that was to be, was jobbing around down at the Harley house, which is now Mis' Oldys's, fixin' more shelves in grandsir' Harley's liberary. My, but isn't there a sight of books there! They do claim that grandsir' Harley had every one that was made from Adam up to the time of his death, and the Oldys folks has been buyin' ever since.
"Well, they knowin' and trustin' father, he put in his dinner hour there in the liberary instead o' coming clear home, and he got real interested in the printing outside the books, and he came to find there was quite a few double names he'd never heard of. So he says to himself, says he, 'I'll put a few down; they'll come handy some day mebbe, and freshen up the family,' and so he did, and after ma died we found his pocket-book all full of figgerin' on work and the names writ in the end. There was more than he ever used, there bein' only ten of us, six boys and four girls. Some o' the names he'd passed over, I reckon, 'cause he wasn't quite sure of their sect.
"The first of us was a girl and she was named Jane Grey, but didn't live out her second year; then come Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlow, and Clarissy Harlow, Robinson Crusoe, Charlotte Temple, Daniel Defoe, Oliver Goldsmith, Cotton Mather, and lastly me, with Oliver, all that's living. I was called for grandma on ma's side on account of her silver spoons, two candlesticks, and snufflers, which I didn't get, marryin' against her wishes before she died.