"Law! What for?" cried Happie, promptly, blowing away vigorously on the spoonful of fudge which she had taken out to test.
"It's less common than Laura and more musical," said Laura pensively. "Laure sounds elegant."
"It sounds silly," said Polly instantly.
"It sounds as if you could put your finger through it anywhere; I don't like French names for American and English girls," added Happie.
"I like names that sound like beautiful music," said Laura, who really was talented musically, but who was pitiably conscious of the fact. "I was making up the loveliest little song—the sweetest air!—and I was writing the words too. I said:
'She shone afar,
Like a golden star,
My angel Laure.'
And then I had to stop, because it ought to have been Laura, and Laure wouldn't have rhymed. If only it was Laure now——"
"It wouldn't have rhymed, even if it had been," interrupted Happie, not too patiently. "Can't you hear that afar and star don't rhyme with Laure?"
"And what's the matter with writing songs and poems to some other girl beside yourself?" suggested Bob. "You might have said: 'My angel Bar,' for instance, and pretended the angel's name was Barbara. For goodness' sake, don't be a goose, Laura! You're nearly in your 'teens, as you so often remind us, and you ought to stop being so sentimental."
"You're not musical, Bob," said Laura, so pityingly, and with such an air of shedding light on the whole question that they all shouted.