Mr. Bangs sulked out of the room and went to his laboratory, and his wife went through her nursing and household duties with double alacrity. The third daughter came, and Mr. Bangs heard it with surprise that bordered on despair. “Never mind it, Kit,” said the contented, good-tempered Mrs. Bangs; “we’ll call this dear, chubby, little thing after your old uncle Joseph; Josephine is a very pretty name.” “I don’t care what you call it,” said her crusty husband; “I consider myself as an ill used, injured man; only I hope, since you like girls so well, that you may have a round dozen of them.” “Oh la! husband, what makes you so spiteful against girls?” said she—“but let that alone, it is no concern of ours—a dozen, indeed! how do you think we can manage to live in this small house with so large a family? You must build a bigger house, man; so, my dear Kit, set about it,”—and this was all the concern it gave her. After that he troubled himself no more with inquiries about the sex of the child, and in due time, one after the other, the round dozen came. The only thing that troubled the contented, busy woman was the naming of the little girls. She certainly, when she could spare her thoughts from her increased cares, would have liked a boy now and then, to please her husband; but as this was not to be, she did the next best thing to it—she gave them all boys’ names. So, after the first, which was called Robina, came Christina, then Josephine, then Phillippa, Augusta, Johanna, Gabriella, Georgiana, and Wilhelmina. At the birth of her tenth child she paused—her father’s name was Jacob, and as she had named Gabriella after her husband’s father, Gabriel, she thought it but fair to honour her own likewise—but Jacob! However, she was not a woman to stop at trifles, even if she had the time; so the _poor_, little, chubby thing—for now she added _poor_ to the chubby—the poor, chubby, little thing was called Jacobina. Then in due time came the eleventh, which was Frederica—the twelfth, Benjamina—“and now,” said the still happy Mrs. Bangs, “what to call my baker’s dozen is more than I can tell. I have one more than Christopher wished me to have, but let that alone; ‘tis no concern of ours; only Robina, dear, step to the parlour and tell your father what a strait I am in about the name. There is his friend, Floss; he has a curly headed, chubby little boy by the name of Francis, and it is a girl’s name too; ask him if he would like to name the poor, dear, chubby, little thing after his friend’s son.” “Tell your mother—are you Phillippy?” “No, father, I am Robina.” “You are all so much alike,” said he, “that I don’t know you apart; girls all look alike; now if one of you had been a boy, as any reasonable man had a right to expect, I could have told the difference. It is a hard thing that a man cannot tell one child from another, a thing that I could have done if they had been boys.”