"Maude!" How Dr. Kennedy started at the mention of a name which
drove all thoughts of the five hundred dollars from his mind. There
was feeling--passion--everything, now, in his cold gray eye, but
quickly recovering his composure, he said calmly: "Maude, Matty--
Maude, is that your child's name?"
"Why, yes," she answered laughingly. "Didn't you know it before? "
"How should I," he replied, "when in your letters you have always
called her 'daughter'? But has she no other name? She surely was not
baptized Maude?"
Ere Mrs. Remington could speak, the sound of little pattering feet
was heard in the hall without, and in a moment Maude Remington stood
before her stepfather-elect, looking, as that rather fastidious
gentleman thought, more like a wild gipsy than the child of a
civilized mother. She was a fat, chubby child, not yet five years
old; black-eyed, black-haired, black-faced, with short, thick curls,
which, damp with perspiration, stood up all over her head, giving
her a singular appearance. She had been playing in the brook, her
favorite companion, and now, with little spatters of mud ornamenting
both face and pantalets, her sun-bonnet hanging down her back, and
her hands full of pebble-stones, she stood furtively eyeing the
stranger, whose mental exclamation was: "Mercy, what a fright!"
"Maude!" exclaimed the distressed Mrs. Remington, "where have you
been? Go at once to Janet, and have your dress changed; then come
back to me."
Nothing loath to join Janet, whose company was preferable to that of
the stranger, Maude left the room, while Dr. Kennedy, turning to
Mrs. Remington, said: "She is not at all like you, my dear."
"No," answered the lady; "she is like her father in everything; the
same eyes, the same hair, and--"
She was going on to say more, when the expression of Dr. Kennedy's
face stopped her, and she began to wonder if she had displeased him.
Dr. Kennedy could talk for hours of "the late Mrs. Kennedy,"
accompanying his words with long-drawn sighs, and enumerating her
many virtues, all of which he expected to be improved upon by her
successor; but he could not bear to hear the name of Harry Remington
spoken by one who was to be his wife, and he at once changed the
subject of Maude's looks to her name, which he learned was really
Matilda. She had been called Maude, Matty said, after one who was
once a very dear friend both of herself and her husband.
"Then we will call her Matilda," said he, "as it is a maxim of mine
never to spoil children by giving them pet names."