“You are very good,” said David, softly.
Captain Garraway-Kyle turned away and looked up for a moment at the sombre church which rose above them. “You had not been married long, I think, Mr. Willis?”
“Not quite a year,” replied David.
“Ah! The child lives, I think?”
“Yes.”
They walked back together to the gate which led to the cottage; and there the captain held out his hand. “Thank you,” he said, stiffly; and then, “I am very sorry. By the way—boy or girl?”
“Oh, it’s a boy,” replied David.
The captain had gone a few paces down the street when he turned on his heel and came back again. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Willis, but what will you call him?”
It was almost an idle question, prompted in the captain’s mind for want of something better to say; but it set the old train of thought running in David Willis’s mind as it had run all that afternoon. The words he had heard at the grave-side seemed to sound in his ears again; the sudden thought struck him to give the boy some name that should keep in memory his mother, and the purpose for which he came into the world, and all that he meant to his father. He faced about, and looked at his visitor with a new light in his eyes. “I shall call him ‘Comethup,’” he said, slowly.
“I beg your pardon——” The captain looked a little startled.