“But Then.”
It was a queer name for a little girl, and it was not her real name—that was Lizzie—but everybody called her “But Then.”
“My real name is prettier, but then, I like the other pretty well,” she said, nodding her short, brown curls merrily. And that sentence shows just how she came by her name.
If Willie complained that it was a miserable, rainy day, and they couldn’t play out of doors, Lizzie assented brightly,—
“Yes; but then, it is a real nice day to fix our scrapbooks.”
When Kate fretted because they had so far to walk to school, her little sister reminded her,—
“But then, it’s all the way through the woods, you know, and that’s ever so much nicer than walking on pavements in a town.”
When even patient Aunt Barbara pined a little because the rooms in the new house were so few and small compared with their old home, a rosy face was quietly lifted to hers with the suggestion,—
“But then, little rooms are the best to cuddle all up together in, don’t you think, Auntie?”