"Very Christian, I believe," answered the Major, invincibly good-natured. "At least I can answer for Dee, who was christened 'David.' I was his godfather. And your name, Flea, is—"
"Felicia, sir," said the girl, as he hesitated, "and my sister's is Beatrice."
Mr. Tayloe's laugh was almost a vulgar sniff, and he walked to the door, as if impatient to be gone.
"Well, good-morning to you," said the Major to Flea. "We won't interrupt your reading any longer. Mr. Tayloe is very much gratified to know that he will have such an intelligent and industrious scholar. You will be a comfort and a pride to him."
"Possibly Mr. Tayloe may take a different view of the case," observed that gentleman, as they mounted the horses they had left tied to the aspen-trees. "I am afraid that young person will have to forget a great deal before she can learn anything. She is puffed up with the notion that she is a prodigy. I would wager my head that she suspected we would go to the school-house to-day, and planned to be found there with her Shakespeare. But what could one expect from the child of a father who turns an eleven-year-old girl loose in Shakespeare, and a mother who has her daughters christened Felicia and Beatrice, and nicknames them Flea and Bea?"
"Oh, come, now! you are hard upon my worthy overseer and his wife," rejoined the Major, diverted by the teacher's indignation. "They are excellent folks who mind their own business, attend church regularly, and mean to have their children well educated. Grigsby is a man of remarkable intelligence for his position—a great reader and a clear thinker. As to the nicknames, it is a trick of this region to deck up children in fancy names, and then, as if they were ashamed of the sentimentality, to make the high-sounding titles ridiculous by nicking and contorting them. The more absurd the nickname the tighter it sticks."
Mr. Tayloe made no immediate answer. They had left the copse flanking the school-house play-ground, and were pacing between the banks of a sunken red-clay road, topped by pines, when he broke the silence:
"The old-field school is a horrible leveller of social distinctions. Where else would your children and Mr. Barton's meet, as equals, those of an illiterate overseer? These things must be right in a so-called republic, but I confess they go against the grain with me."
"They dry straight," said the Major, oracularly. "If the planter's children cannot keep abreast, if not ahead, of the overseer's, they must fall behind in the race. In this country every man ought to have a fair chance."