to call them, Philip? We've never even spoken of it." She said it in a flat voice, as if they had been puppies or kittens, and not children—his children—at all.
"I don't know."
"I've been thinking about the girl. Your mother would like to call her Emma, but I'd like it if you'd call her Naomi."
He knew before she had finished what she had meant to say, and he knew, too, that he hated both names. To go on for the rest of his life, even as an old man, calling his child "Emma" or "Naomi". . . .
"She's your child, too, Naomi. You have a choice in the matter."
"I wanted you to he pleased." There was a humbleness in her voice which made him feel ill.
"And the boy—have you thought of him?"
"I want to call him Philip, of course."
(No, he couldn't do that: it was like wishing them bad luck.)
"No, I hate the name of Philip. You can call the girl Naomi. You bore her, and you've more of a right to name her than Ma has. But—no, we won't call the boy Philip. We'll think of something else."
"I'd like to have her called Naomi . . . and then you'd think of me sometimes, Philip."
He looked at her sharply. "But I do think of you. Why should you say that?"
"Oh, I don't know . . . just in case anything happened to me. That's why I'd like to call him Philip."
"No . . . no . . . any other name."
He took up his hat. "What are you going to do with the twins on Sundays and choir practice nights?"
"I don't know. I'd thought of asking Mabelle to
