and—now my dear Hassy," said she, drawing her chair nearer to her husband and looking up to his face—"think of the very great point lam going to give up for your small one—you shall have the naming of our little girl!"
This was indeed a temptation, for Mr. Webb was of a romantic turn of mind, and considered a good name as a thing of vital importance. His own name, Ahasuerus, had been a source of much mortification to him; and that of his wife, Winifred, was equally inharmonious and distasteful. But Mrs. Webb had no romance about her; she called her husband's horse Mush, because the animal happened one day to run his nose into a dishful of that article; and a fine handsome little terrier she called Scratch, although her husband had named the one Orelio and the other Bevis.
As to her own name, or that of her husband, she saw nothing disagreeable in either of them; and could she have followed her own inclinations she would have called her little girl Rachel. But, although thus indifferent about names, which in general were thought old fashioned—such as Margaret, Magdalen, Sarah and the like, yet she had an active dislike to fanciful ones; Emily, Caroline and Matilda, had nothing notable or thrifty in their character; they were novel names, and she hated novels. Still less did she like those of Myrtilla, Flora, Narcissa; they savoured too much of the country; she dreaded her husband's tastes either way.
If romances were uppermost at the time, then the first mentioned names would be present to his imagination; and if her child were so unfortunate as to get one of them, it might be the means of fastening a lackadaisical character on her for life; she would never be fit for any rational employment.
If, on the contrary, her husband had the country mania on him, then what could she hope for but a
