“You shall come here and play,” said the other. “We are having a new court made. And Fred—where is Fred, Phyll?—Fred will be so pleased to have such a pretty little thing to play with.”
“How should I know where he is?—mooning about somewhere, sketching or something.”
“Oh,” said Effie, “do you sketch?” Perhaps she was secretly mollified, though she said to herself that she was yet more offended, by being called a pretty little thing.
“Not I; but my brother, that is Fred: and I am Phyllis, and she is Doris. Now tell us your name, for we can’t go on calling each other Miss, can we? Such near neighbours as we are, and going to see so much of each other.”
“No, of course we can’t go on saying Miss. What should you say was her name, Phyll? Let us guess. People are always like their names. I should say Violet.”
“Dear no, such a mawkish little sentimental name. She is not sentimental at all—are you? What is an Ogilvie name? You have all family names in Scotland, haven’t you, that go from mother to daughter?”
Effie sat confused while they talked over her. She was not accustomed to this sudden familiarity. To call the girls by their names, when she scarcely had formed their acquaintance, seemed terrible to her—alarming, yet pleasant too. She blushed, yet felt it was time to stop the discussion.
“They call me Effie,” she said. “That is not all my name, but it is my name at home.”
“They call me Effie,” repeated Miss Doris, with a faint mockery in her tone; “what a pretty way of saying it, just like the Italians! If you are going to be so conscientious as that, I wasn’t christened Doris, I must tell you: but I was determined Phyll should not have all the luck. We are quite eighteenth century here—furniture and all.”
“But I can’t see the furniture,” said Effie, making for the first time an original remark. “Do you like to sit in the dark?”