"And he is 'most a year old!"
"Yes, he will be a year next month, but he is the first boy in a family of four girls, and we can't decide what to call him, so he has no name yet. You might think up some pretty ones to suggest. We've exhausted everyone else's lists."
She laughed as she spoke, but Tabitha thought she was thoroughly in earnest, and seizing the baby, she ran away to ponder over the vital question of pretty names, confident of finding one that would suit the over-particular parents.
"I'd like to call him Dionysius if he was mine," she confided to Carrie, who soon joined her in her self-appointed task of nursemaid, for the two girls were seldom apart; "but—after—that time—well, he might not like it when he grew up. I am afraid it might be unlucky."
"Frederick is a pretty name," ventured Carrie. "That's papa's."
"Yes, that's not bad, but I reckon Mrs. McKittrick has heard of it already, for I know lots of people called that. She wants something real pretty. I know how it is, for my name is so perfectly horrid that sometimes it seems as if I can't endure it. I wouldn't want to pick out a name that this darling baby would hate when he grew up. It must be something awfully nice. How do you think she would like Rosslyn? I have liked that name ever since I heard it and was always sorry I could not stay in Ferndale and get acquainted with the boy it belonged to, and his cousin Rosalie."
"If you had stayed there I never would have known you, Pussy," suggested Carrie, for Tabitha was her idol and she shuddered when she thought how lonely it would be if Tabitha should move away now and leave her there.
"That's so; I forgot it just for a minute. I'm sure Rosalie could never have been any nicer than you are, and I don't believe Rosslyn was nicer than Jerome, though Jerome does tease me dreadfully sometimes. He doesn't mean to, and he always tells me he is sorry. I like the name Jerome, but Mrs. McKittrick says she hates it, so it would never do to suggest that."
"Don't they use last names sometimes for first names? Mrs. McKittrick thinks Dr. Vane is splendid. I heard her tell mamma so. He saved the baby when it was so terribly sick and the other doctor said it could not get well."
"Maybe it would do for part of the name, though I wouldn't want to call him Vane every day. That would sound as if he was a peacock. See him pull that flower to pieces just as if he was trying to study how it is put together. Maybe he will grow up to be a big botany man. I would like to be one myself if I didn't intend to keep house for Tom. Oh, the baby has started for the river!"