"Let 'em," says Mr. Potts, heroic, if vulgar, shaking his crimson head. "It's fun to them, and it's by no means 'death' to me. It does no harm. But it's a nuisance to have one's mother put to the trouble of concocting a fine name, if one doesn't get the benefit of it." "I agree with you. Were I a man, and rejoiced in such a name as Plantagenet, I would insist upon having every syllable of it distinctly sounded, or I'd know the reason why. 'All or nothing' should be my motto." "I never think of it, I don't see my wife's cards," says Mr. Potts, who has had a good deal of champagne, and is rather moist about the eyes. "'Mrs. Plantagenet Potts' would look well, wouldn't it?" "Very aristocratic," says false Molly, with an admiring nod. "I almost think,--I am not quite sure,--but I almost think I would marry a man to bear a name like that." "Would you?" cries Mr. Potts, his tongue growing freer, while enthusiasm sparkles in every feature. "If I only thought that, Miss Molly----" "How pretty Mrs. Darley is looking to-night!" interrupts Molly, adroitly; "what a clear complexion she has!--just like a child's." "Not a bit of it," says Mr. Potts. "Children don't require 'cream of roses' and 'Hebe bloom' and--and all that sort of thing, you know--to get 'emselves up." "Ah! my principal pity for her is that she doesn't seem to have anything to say." "Englishwomen never have, as a rule; they are dull to the last degree. Now, you are a singular exception." "English! I am not English," says Molly, with exaggerated disgust. "Do not offend me. I am Irish--altogether, thoroughly Irish,--heart and mind a Paddy." "No! are you, by Jove?" says Mr. Potts. "So am I--at least, partly so. My mother is Irish." So she had been English, Welsh, and Scotch on various occasions; there is scarcely anything Mrs. Potts had _not_ been. There was even one memorable occasion on which she had had Spanish blood in her veins, and (according to Plantagenet's account) never went out without a lace mantilla flowing from her foxy head. It would, indeed, be rash to fix on any nationality to which the venerable lady might not lay claim, when her son's interests so willed it. "She came from--er--Galway," he says now; "good old family too--but--out at elbows and--and--that." "Yes?" Molly says, interested. "And her name?" "Blake," replies he, unblushingly, knowing there never was a Blake that did not come out of Galway. "I feel quite as though I had known you forever," says Molly, much pleased. "You know my principal crime is my Hibernian extraction, which perhaps makes me cling to the fact more and more. Mr. Amherst cannot forgive me--my father." "Yet he was of good family, I believe, and all that?" questioningly.