"Not your name?" said Ned.
"No," said Patsy. "My father's name is Mr. Patsy Rafferty, Esquire; but I'm only Patsy Rafferty, without any handle or tail to it."
"If that's all that ails it," said Ned, "it's easy enough to take off the handle and tail," and he took them off.
Patsy took another look at it.
"That's not exactly the way I spell my name," said he. "There ought to be an E there, instead of an X."
"Of course there ought," said Ned, "but you see we haven't any Es in that style of type, and it's an old established rule in all printing-offices that when there's a letter you haven't got, you simply put an X in place of it. Everybody understands it."
"I didn't understand it," said Patsy, "and I think my name looks better when it's spelled the way I was christened."
"All right!" said Ned. "We'll make it as you want it; but it'll have to be set in some other kind of type, and that Tuscan is the prettiest thing in the office."
Patsy still preferred correctness to beauty, and had his way.
"And now what color will you have?" said Ned. "We can print it in black, or red, or blue, or partly one color and partly another—almost any color, in fact."