“Do you like ‘Mary’ for a name?” she asked, scarcely breathing the words.
“Why, yes, I don’t know but I do,” said the boy, turning to face her. “But what are you whispering for? I can tell you what I don’t like—I despise ‘Bobby’ for a name! It’s just like baby talk—but I’m afraid of hurting Aunt Hetty’s feelings if I say anything about it. Next time she comes over to our house, I’m going to get grandfather just to suggest to her that it’s time to give up nicknames when a boy’s all but in his teens. He can do it all right. Maybe she’ll bring you over. I’d like to show you George Rogers, and we could do our act for you.”
“Perhaps I shall be in school then,” said Polly, feeling highly honored by this invitation, “there are only two weeks more vacation.”
“You’re not going to school next term,” said Bobby. “I know, for Aunt Hetty told me. She wants to get you more ‘chippered up,’ Arctura says. Isn’t Arctura an old dear? Did she ever tell you what the children used to sing about her nose when she was a young one? It’s funny, and she says she never minded, but I’d have soon stopped them if I’d been there.”
“She never told me,” said Polly, with a glance of admiration at the boy who spoke so valiantly while he looked so mild, “I’d like to hear it.”
“Her nose is pretty prominent, of course,” said the heir of the Pomeroys, reluctantly, “and she says it got its growth before the rest of her. And when they’d see her coming they’d sing out:
“Hark! hark!
’Tura’s bark!
’Spose her nose
Came out o’ the Ark!”