Page:Camperdown - Griffith - 1836.djvu/236

 vels, my dear Winny," blushing deeply as he said it—"Glumdalclitch is the name of a giantess!"

"Well, this comes of so much reading; I bless my want of taste that way; it is enough to make one forswear books; never reproach me again for my indifference towards them. I am sure I wish Mr. Gulliver had staid at home, if he could have communicated nothing better than such a hideous name. But where is the use of fretting? since it is so, we must make the best of it, and then you know we need not call the name out in full; you never call me Winnifred, nor do I call you Ahasuerus. Let us shorten the name to Glummy—no? Well, how would Clitchy sound—you don't like that. Let us shorten it to Dally, that I know will please you, for it is the name of a flower."

"How often Winny," said her fretted husband, "have I told you that the flower is called Dahlia;" suspending for a moment his right to feel indignant and irritable, to do justice to the pronunciation of the name of a flower.

"Dahlia is it? well, that is the way an Irishman would call Delia. Let us call her Delia then, it is a pretty pastoral name;" and as she said this, she cast a side glance at her husband.

After this, and other conversations of the kind, they agreed to give the child this uncouth name, for the charm of living in the country was hourly growing more captivating to Mr. Webb, and Mrs. Webb had a great reverence for a thousand dollars a year. Besides, the misery of living where they would daily be subject to the coarse mirth of her uncle, when he made his regular visits to the city, which he had until of late years, been always in the habit of doing, was becoming more and more apparent. She even with more alacrity than one could expect, set about making preparations for her departure to Oak Valley.