I can't help it, Mary. It does aggravate me to look at
her!"
Mary could only shake her head with a mixture of pity, reproof, and
amusement, and as a safer subject could not help asking—-
"By the bye, why do you confuse your friends by having all the two
families named in pairs?"
"We didn't know we were going to live close together," said Carey.
"But the fact is that the Janets were named after their fathers' only
sister, who seems to have been an equal darling to both. We would
have avoided Robert, but we found that it would have been thought
disrespectful not to call the boy after his grandfather and uncle."
"And Bobus _is_ a thoroughly individual name."
"Then Jock's name is John Lucas, and we did mean to call him by the
second, but it wouldn't stick. Names won't sometimes, and there's a
formality in Lucas that would never fit that skipjack of a boy. He
got called Jock as a nickname, and now he will abide by it. But
Joseph Armine's second name does fit him, and so we have kept to it;
and Barbara was dear grandmamma's own name, and quite our own."
Therewith Babie rushed downstairs with "He's coming, Mother Carey,"
and darted out at the house door to welcome Mr. Ogilvie at the gate,
and lead him in in triumph, attended by her two brothers.
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