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 of name that you think sounds pretty, or that its grandmother or its maiden aunt had, quite oblivious of the fact that Nature may not have intended it for anything of the kind. It is just as if you took the seeds in your garden and as soon as you saw the first tiny green shoots come up, you said, 'Now I'll call these violets,' and you went on calling them violets, though they would persist in growing up sunflowers. Just think of the unfortunate Hermiones, Rosemaries, Beatrices, and Alexandras that one meets whom Nature never intended for any such high-flown appellations, and they can't, poor things, possibly live up to them, however much they try. It's like the jackdaw in the peacock's feathers. It's quite pathetic. While, as for the charming, tall, and graceful girls who are doomed to go through life as Emmas, Janes, Sarahs, and Jemimas, it's really tragic. Aunt Agatha has very strong ideas on this subject, though I'm bound to say they are not quite mine. It was owing to my impulsive defence of a maid called 'Glory' whom Aunt Agatha wanted to rechristen Emma, more suitably to her rank in life, that I found myself later on bound down to Ermyntrude.

It was like this. The first maid with whom Aunt Agatha started life had been most appropriately named Emma. Aunt Agatha thought that a very good and suitable name for a maid, and so when the first one left and she was appointing another, she had told her in her downright way:

'I don't care what your name is. My last maid's name was Emma. I'm accustomed to Emma, and