Family Pride

This was a possibility that had formed no part of Mrs. Cameron's thoughts, or Juno's. Of course Katy would acquiesce in whatever Wilford said was best, and he always thought as they did. Consequently there would be no trouble whatever. It was time the child had a name--time it wore the elegant christening robe, Mrs. Cameron's gift, which cost more money than would have fed a hungry family for weeks. The matter must be decided, and so with a view of deciding it a family dinner party was held at No. ---- Fifth Avenue, the day succeeding the call on Marian Hazleton.

Very pure and beautiful Katy looked as she once more took her old place in the chair they called hers at Father Cameron's, because it was the one she had always preferred to any other--a large, motherly easy-chair, which took in nearly the whole of her petite figure, and against whose soft cushioned back she leaned her curly head with a pretty air of importance, as after dinner was over, she came back to the parlor with the other ladies, waiting for the gentlemen to join them, when they were to talk up baby's name.

Katy knew exactly what it would be called, but as Wilford had never asked her, she was keeping it a secret, not doubting that the others would be quite as much delighted as herself with the novel name, "Genevra." Not long before her illness she had read an English story, which had in it a Genevra, and she had at once seized upon it as the most delightful cognomen a person could well possess. "Genevra Cameron!" She had repeated it to herself many a time as she sat with her baby on her lap. She had written it on sundry slips of paper, which had afterward found their way into the grate; and once she had scratched with her diamond ring upon the window pane in her dressing-room, where it now stood in legible characters, "Genevra Cameron!" There should be no middle name to take from the sweetness of the first--only Genevra--that was sufficient; and the little lady tapped her foot impatiently upon the carpet, wishing Wilford and father would hurry and come in.

Never for an instant had it entered her mind that she, as the mother, would not be permitted to call her baby what she chose; so when she heard Mrs. Cameron speaking to Helen of Margaret Augusta, she smiled complacently, tossing her curls of golden brown, and thinking to herself, "Maggie Cameron--pretty enough, but not like Genevra. Indeed I shall not have any Margarets now; next time perhaps I may."