During the whole of this acquaintance it had never occurred to Lizarann to ask this boy's name. And but yesterday she had committed the tactical error of surrendering her own christened name in exchange for peppermint drops. The moment of the present writing is a deadly afternoon in January, gettin' on for four, but that dark you'll have to light the gas in the end, and may just as well do it at once. The place is the one spoken of in an earlier chapter as Vatted Rum Corner, and that boy is a settin' on the rilin' eatin' of four 'ot chestnuts off of Mrs. Groves's bikin' trye, for a 'ape'ny, and to be allowed to warm your fingers at the grite. He had had to make room for other customers.
Lizarann came up cold, and envied the feast. The boy was a self-indulgent boy, or seemed so. For he only said, "These four's for me, bought and paid for, square. You git some for yourself, orf of Mother Groves. Two for a farden's your figger, Aloyzer." And then he sketched a clog-dance on the hard-trodden snow of the pavement, with a mouth quite full of chestnuts.
Lizarann felt the heartlessness of his attitude. Yesterday he had cajoled her into an admission that her name was Lizarann by offering peppermint drops. Now he had nothing to gain by an offer of chestnuts, and kept them all himself! She happened to be in funds, and could have purchased four for a 'ape'ny, and in that case would as like as not have given that boy one, as an exemplar towards generosity. But at the moment a higher interest claimed her attention. He knew her name, and she didn't know his. An iniquity, clearly! How could she remedy it?
Now Lizarann had contrived, childwise, a curious idea about her name. It may have originated in a chant she herself had joined in frequently, merely for the sake of the music:
"Oh fie—fie for shame!
Everybody knows your name."
But it certainly had acquired its full force from an expression made use of by her Aunt Stingy, who had spoken of a young person as having "lost her good name." What the young person was called by her friends, afterwards, was a problem Lizarann had given a good deal of thought to. And she was now unable to dissociate the young person's position altogether from her own. If her name had not been lost as a necessary implement of social intercourse with the world at large, it at least had been surrendered with no per contra, in the case of an immoral and worthless member of it. But she felt that, could she become possessed of his name, as a set-off, the balance of righteousness would be adjusted. And she was much more anxious about this than about the chestnuts.
"What's your nime?" said she, after self-commune which suggested no less trenchant way of approaching the subject.
The boy paused in the clog-dance. "Moses," said he. And then went on as before.
"Nuffint elst no more than Moses?"