"What is your name, then?--your Christian name, by which I am to call you?" I did not relish the prospect of being called by my Christian name, for, as I have already said, I was a proud child, so I did not reply. "Unable to answer a plain question!" observed Mrs. Marks, bespeaking the attention of Mrs. Digby with her raised forefinger; "does not know its own name!" "My name is Miss Burns," I said indignantly. "Does not know the difference between a surname and a Christian name!" continued Mrs. Marks, commenting on my obtuseness. "Come," she charitably added, to aid the efforts of my infant mind, "are we to call you Jane, Louisa, Mary Lucy, Alice?" I remained silent. "This looks like obstinacy," remarked Mrs. Marks, in a tone of discovery. "Let us reason like rational beings," she added, forgetting I was only a little animal: "if I don't know your Christian name, how am I to call you?" "Sarah never called me by my Christian name," I bluntly replied. "Miss Burns," solemnly inquired Mrs. Marks, "do you mean to establish a parallel? May I know who and what you take me for?" "You are the housekeeper," I answered. Alas! why has the plain truth the power of offending so many people besides Mrs. Marks, and who, like her, too, scorn to attribute their wrath to its true cause? "You have been asked for your Christian name," she said, irefully; "with unparalleled obstinacy you have refused to tell it; you shall be called Burns, and go to bed at once." The sentence was immediately carried into effect; I was taken to the next room, undressed, and hoisted up into the tall four-posted bedstead which nightly received Mrs Marks, and left there to darkness and my reflections. But no punishment from those I did not love ever had affected me. I was soon fast asleep. Memory is a succession of vivid pictures and sudden blanks. I remember my first evening at Thornton House more distinctly than the incidents of last week, but the days that followed it are wrapt in a dim mist. But much that then seemed mysterious on account of my ignorance, I have since learned to understand. My grandfather was a country gentleman of good family, but of eccentric character. He had from a youth devoted himself to science, and renounced the world. I believe he knew and studied everything, but his learning led to no result, save that of diminishing a fortune which had never been very ample, and of burdening still more heavily his encumbered estate. I have often thought what a dull life my poor mother must have led with him in that gloomy old house, and I can scarcely wonder that, when a man, young, amiable, and rather good-looking than plain, was imprudently thrown in her way, she knew not how to resist the temptation of love and liberty.