“Oh, Tiny,” said Bertram, with a slight change of color. “Yes—I had not been thinking. What is her—real name?”
“I believe it is Agnes, and another name too—an old-fashioned name; do you remember, mother?”
“Laetitia. I don’t know what you mean by an old-fashioned name. I had once a great friend whose name was Laetitia. It means light-heartedness, doesn’t it?—joy. And a very nice meaning, too. It would just suit Tiny. They can call her Letty when she gets a little older. But the worst of these baby names is that there is no getting rid of them; and Tiny is so absurd for a big girl.”
During this rather long speech Bertram sat with a strange look, as if he could have cried, Lucy thought, which, however, must have been absurd, for what he did do was to laugh. “Yes, they do stick; and the more absurd they are the longer they last.”
“Tiny, however, is not absurd in the least; and isn’t she a delightful little thing?” Lucy repeated. She was not, perhaps, though so very good a girl, very rapid in her perceptions, and besides, it would have been entirely idiotic to imagine the existence of any reason why Bertram should not discuss freely the little characteristics of Mrs. Nugent’s child.
“Poor little Tiny!” he said, quite inappropriately, with a sort of stifled sigh.
“Oh! do you mean because her father is dead?” said Lucy, with a countenance of dismay. She blamed herself immediately for having thought so little of that misfortune. Perhaps the thing was that Mr. Bertram had been a friend of Tiny’s father, and it was this that made him so grave. She added, “I am sure I am very sorry for poor Mr. Nugent; but then I never knew him, or knew anybody that knew him. Yes, to be sure, poor little Tiny! But, Mr. Bertram, she has such a very nice mother. Don’t you think for a girl the most important thing is to have a nice mother?”
“No doubt,” Bertram said very gravely, and again he sighed.
Lucy was full of compunction, but scarcely knew how to express it. He must have been a very great friend of poor Mr. Nugent, and perhaps he had felt, seeing Nelly quite out of mourning, and looking on the whole so bright, that his friend had been forgotten. But no! Lucy was ready to go to the stake for it, that Mrs. Nugent had not forgotten her husband—more at least than it was inevitable and kind to her other friends to forget.
And then Mr. Wradisley, having finished his complaints about “your cook,” told his mother across the table that it was quite possible he might have to go to town in a few days. “Perhaps to-morrow,” he said. The dealer in antiquities, through whose hands he spent a great deal of money, had some quite unique examples which it would be sinful to let slip by.