“Name?” snarled Colonel Matthew Devon de Warrenne. “Name the little beast? Call him what you like, and then drown him.” The tight-lipped face of the elderly nurse flushed angrily, but before she could make the indignant reply that her hurt and scandalized look presaged, the Colonel added:—
“No, look here, call him Damocles, and done with it. The Sword hangs over him too, I suppose, and he’ll die by it, as all his ancestors have done. Yes—”
“It’s not a nice name, Sir, to my thinking,” interrupted the woman, “not for an only name—and for an only child. Let it be a second or third name, Sir, if you want to give him such an outlandish one.”
She fingered her new black dress nervously with twitching hands and the tight lips trembled.
“He’s to be named Damocles and nothing else,” replied the Master, and, as she turned away with a look of positive hate, he added sardonically:—
“And then you can call him ‘Dam’ for short, you know, Nurse.”
Nurse Beaton bridled, clenched her hands, and stiffened visibly. Had the man been her social equal or any other than her master, her pent-up wrath and indignation would have broken forth in a torrent of scathing abuse.
“Never would I call the poor motherless lamb Dam, Sir,” she answered with restraint.
“Then call him Dummy! Good morning, Nurse,” snapped the Colonel.
As she turned to go, with a bitter sigh, she asked in the hopeless tone of one who knows the waste of words:—