Her teacher’s certainty it must be Mabel Made Maple first take notice of her name. She asked her father and he told her “Maple— Maple is right.” “But teacher told the school There’s no such name.” “Teachers don’t know as much As fathers about children, you tell teacher. You tell her that it’s M-A-P-L-E. You ask her if she knows a maple tree. Well, you were named after a maple tree. Your mother named you. You and she just saw Each other in passing in the room upstairs, One coming this way into life, and one Going the other out of life—you know? So you can’t have much recollection of her. She had been having a long look at you. She put her finger in your cheek so hard It must have made your dimple there, and said, ‘Maple.’ I said it too: ‘Yes, for her name.’ She nodded. So we’re sure there’s no mistake. I don’t know what she wanted it to mean, But it seems like some word she left to bid you Be a good girl—be like a maple tree. How like a maple tree’s for us to guess. Or for a little girl to guess sometime. Not now—at least I shouldn’t try too hard now. By and by I will tell you all I know About the different trees, and something, too, About your mother that perhaps may help.” Dangerous self-arousing words to sow. Luckily all she wanted of her name then Was to rebuke her teacher with it next day, And give the teacher a scare as from her father. Anything further had been wasted on her, Or so he tried to think to avoid blame. She would forget it. She all but forgot it. What he sowed with her slept so long a sleep, And came so near death in the dark of years, That when it woke and came to life again The flower was different from the parent seed. It came back vaguely at the glass one day, As she stood saying her name over aloud, Striking it gently across her lowered eyes To make it go well with the way she looked. What was it about her name? Its strangeness lay In having too much meaning. Other names, As Lesley, Carol, Irma, Marjorie, Signified nothing. Rose could have a meaning, But hadn’t as it went. (She knew a Rose.) This difference from other names it was Made people notice it—and notice her. (They either noticed it, or got it wrong.) Her problem was to find out what it asked In dress or manner of the girl who bore it. If she could form some notion of her mother— What she had thought was lovely, and what good. This was her mother’s childhood home; The house one story high in front, three stories On the end it presented to the road. (The arrangement made a pleasant sunny cellar.) Her mother’s bedroom was her father’s still, Where she could watch her mother’s picture fading. Once she found for a bookmark in the Bible A maple leaf she thought must have been laid In wait for her there. She read every word Of the two pages it was pressed between As if it was her mother speaking to her.