Little Miss Grouch Part 7

"No, I'm not an artist. Simply a connoisseur. Now that I look more closely, your eyebrows are slanted a full degree too much to the north."

"My nurse was a j.a.p. Do you think Oriental influence could account for it?" she asked anxiously.

"And at the corner of your mouth there is a most reprehensible dimple.

Dimples like that simply ought not to be allowed. As for your nose--"

"Never mind my nose," said she with dignity. "It minds its own business."

"No," he continued, with the air of one who sums up to a conclusion. "I cannot approve the _tout ensemble_. It's interesting. And peculiar. And suggestive. But too post-impressionistic."

"That is quite enough about me. Suppose you change the subject now and account for yourself."

"I? Oh, I came along to frustrate the plots of a wicked father."

"He isn't a wicked father! And I didn't ask you why you're here. I want to know who you are!"

"I'm the Perfect Pig."

Little Miss Grouch stamped her little French heel. As it landed the young man was six feet away, having retired with the graceful agility of a trained boxer.

"You're very light on your feet," said she.

"Therein lies my only hope of self-preservation. _You_ were not very light on my foot yesterday, you know."

"Has it recovered enough to take me for a walk?"

"Quite!"

"Still," she added, ruminating, "ought I to go walking with a man whose very name I don't know?"

"My name? Do you think that's fair, when you won't tell me yours?

Besides, I don't believe you'd care about it, anyway."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Well, it isn't very impressive. People have even been known to jeer at it."

"You're ashamed of it?"

"No-o-o-o," said the Tyro artfully.

"You are! I'd be ashamed to be ashamed of my name--even if it were Smith."

"h.e.l.lo! What's the matter with Smith?" demanded the young man, startled at this unexpected turn.

"Oh, nothing," said she loftily, "except that it's so awfully common.

Why, there are thousands of Smiths!"

"Common? Well, I'll be jig--" At this point, resentment spurred the ingenuity of the Tyro to a prompt and lofty flight. "If you don't like Smith," he said, "I wonder what you'll think when you hear the awful truth."

"Try me."

"Very well," he sighed. "I suppose it's foolish to have any feeling about it. But perhaps you'd be sensitive, too, if you'd been born to the name of Daddleskink."

_"What!"_

"Daddleskink," said the Tyro firmly. "Sanders Daddleskink. Suppose you were Mrs. Sanders Daddleskink."

"I shan't suppose any such thing," she retorted indignantly.

"I warned you that you wouldn't like it."

"Like it? I don't even believe it. There ain't no such animile as a Daddleskink."

"Madame," said the Tyro, drawing himself up to his full height, "I would have you understand that, uneuphonious as the name may seem, the Daddleskinks sat in the seats of the mighty when our best-known American families of to-day, such as the Murphys, the Cohens, the Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons, were mere nebulous films of protoplasmic mud."

"Oo-ooh!" said Little Miss Grouch, making a little red rosebud of her mouth. "What magnificent language you use."

"Genealogists claim," continued the young man, warming to his subject, "that the family came from Provence and was originally De Dalesquinc, and that the name became corrupted into its present form. My friends often call me Smith for short," he concluded, in sudden inspiration.

"Very tactful of them," she murmured.

"Yes. You might have had the privilege, yourself, if you hadn't derided the name of Smith. Now, aren't you sorry?"

"I shall _not_ call you Smith," declared the girl. "I shall call you by your own name, Mr. Sanders Daddle--Oh, it simply can't be true!" she wailed.

Chance sent Alderson along the deck at this moment. "h.e.l.lo, Dr.

Alderson," called the Tyro.

"h.e.l.lo, Sandy!" said the other.

"You see," said the Tyro in dismal triumph.

Scant enough it was, as corroboration for so outrageous a facture as the cognomen Daddleskink, but it served to convince the doubter.

"At least, you have the satisfaction of being unusual," she consoled him.

"If you regard it as a satisfaction. Can you blame me for denouncing my fate? How will you like introducing such a name to your friends?"

"I'm not going to introduce you to my friends. I'm going to keep you for myself. Solitary confinement."

_"Solitude a deux?_ That's a mitigation. Oh, beautiful--I mean to say plain but worthy _incognita_, suppose I ferret out the mystery of your ident.i.ty for myself?"

"I put you on honor. You're to ask no questions of any one. You're not even to listen when anyone speaks to me. Do you promise?"

"May my eyes be blasted out and my hopes wrecked by never seeing you again, if I be not faithful," he said.

But Fate arranges these matters to suit its more subtle purposes.