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 ing over those names. The hero’s name is Percival Dalrymple.”

“Have you named all the characters?” asked Diana wistfully. “If you hadn’t I was going to ask you to let me name one—just some unimportant person. I’d feel as if I had a share in the story then.”

“You may name the little hired boy who lived with the Lesters,” conceded Anne. “He is not very important, but he is the only one left unnamed.”

“Call him Raymond Fitzosborne,” suggested Diana, who had a store of such names laid away in her memory, relics of the old “Story Club,” which she and Anne and Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis had had in their schooldays.

Anne shook her head doubtfully.

“I’m afraid that is too aristocratic a name for a chore boy, Diana. I couldn’t imagine a Fitzosborne feeding pigs and picking up chips, could you?”

Diana didn’t see why, if you had an imagination at all, you couldn’t stretch it to that extent; but probably Anne knew best, and the chore boy was finally christened Robert Ray, to be called Bobby should occasion require.

“How much do you suppose you’ll get for it?” asked Diana.

But Anne had not thought about this at all. She was in pursuit of fame, not filthy lucre, and her literary dreams were as yet untainted by mercenary considerations.

“You’ll let me read it, won’t you?” pleaded Diana.