(Well, I should think so! The Longer Catechism, in fact!) “Really?” I said meekly. “And almost the first thing she asked me was what her Christian name was.” (M’m, “almost”—I wonder what the _very first_ thing was? What is it generally?) “Of course, I ought to have foreseen that——” (And _hadn’t_ he? Good gracious! The mapped-out scheme with _another_ flaw in it!) —“but curiously enough, I’d overlooked it, and wasn’t prepared for it. Now, I couldn’t very well tell my mother the truth, namely, that I did not know. I have never been able to make out whether your usual initials were ‘M’ or ‘N.T.’ I had taken it for ‘N.’ So, on the spur of the moment, I gave her the first girl’s name that began with N that I could think of.” N or M! Yes! _Exactly_ like the catechism! For the first time in my life in Still Waters’ presence I laughed aloud. Surely the country air and the rush through it in the car must have gone to my head. Amazed at myself, but even then laughing a little still, I pulled myself together to inquire, “And what did you say to Mrs. Waters when she received my note signed by my real name?” “Oh!—I said—something or other about ‘Nancy’ being the usual abbreviation for ‘Monica’ in some places!” “How _quick_ of you!” I retorted—while my Near Oriental self sat back and gasped at my new boldness. He _must_ have wondered at it too; thought it bravado, the recklessness of despair, I suppose. “_Something_ had to be said! And I am afraid, Miss Trant, that, for the matter in hand, ‘_Nancy_’ it will have to be. A sort of _nom-de-guerre_, you know—if you can call it ‘_guerre_.’” He was actually laughing himself now. This made his face look at least ten years younger, changing him so that I felt him to be even more of a stranger to me than the machine-like autocrat who rapped out his “_Now, Miss Trant!_” and his “_Take this down_” at the Near Oriental. But in a moment he was serious again. He seemed, for the first time, to feel something of what _I’ve_ been feeling ever since we’ve been—so to speak, “engaged.” “It’s asking a good deal, but I have to trust to you to meet all these awkwardnesses as well as you can,” he said gravely. “And I’ll do all in my power to avoid them, I assure you. A good deal of the strangeness can be put down to the—er—natural shyness of people who are—so—er—recently engaged.” “Oh, of course,” I murmured, struggling not to laugh any more. But I wondered what other wild fictions about “_Nancy_” he’d had to improvise for his mother. Supposing she’d wanted to know what I was like to _look_ at? Well, _he_ wouldn’t know! Dark or fair—short or tall? As likely as not he’d tell her—as _something_ had to be said—that I was six foot high and a radiant blonde. And what would she think of his not possessing a single photograph of me to show her? Really, he was almost benighted enough, since he’d given me another girl’s name, to pass off as mine another girl’s portrait!