Domestic fiction; Family -- England -- Midlands -- Fiction; Midlands (England) -- Fiction
“You see!” cried the woman. “He’s that _pig-headed!_”
“And she’s so nice, and she laughs, and she hasn’t even got a name,”
crooned Ursula to the child.
“Let me hold her,” she added.
He yielded her the child, that smelt of babies. But it had such blue,
wide, china blue eyes, and it laughed so oddly, with such a taking
grimace, Ursula loved it. She cooed and talked to it. It was such an
odd, exciting child.
“What’s _your_ name?” the man suddenly asked of her.
“My name is Ursula—Ursula Brangwen,” she replied.
“Ursula!” he exclaimed, dumbfounded.
“There was a Saint Ursula. It’s a very old name,” she added hastily, in
justification.
“Hey, mother!” he called.
There was no answer.
“Pem!” he called, “can’t y’hear?”
“What?” came the short answer.
“What about ‘Ursula’?” he grinned.
“What about _what?_” came the answer, and the woman appeared in the
doorway, ready for combat.
“Ursula—it’s the lass’s name there,” he said, gently.
The woman looked the young girl up and down. Evidently she was
attracted by her slim, graceful, new beauty, her effect of white
elegance, and her tender way of holding the child.
“Why, how do you write it?” the mother asked, awkward now she was
touched. Ursula spelled out her name. The man looked at the woman. A
bright, confused flush came over the mother’s face, a sort of luminous
shyness.
“It’s not a _common_ name, is it!” she exclaimed, excited as by an
adventure.
“Are you goin’ to have it then?” he asked.
“I’d rather have it than Annabel,” she said, decisively.
“An’ I’d rather have it than Gladys Em’ler,” he replied.
There was a silence, Ursula looked up.
“Will you really call her Ursula?” she asked.
“Ursula Ruth,” replied the man, laughing vainly, as pleased as if he
had found something.
It was now Ursula’s turn to be confused.
“It _does_ sound awfully nice,” she said. “I _must_ give her something.
And I haven’t got anything at all.”
She stood in her white dress, wondering, down there in the barge. The
lean man sitting near to her watched her as if she were a strange
being, as if she lit up his face. His eyes smiled on her, boldly, and
yet with exceeding admiration underneath.
“Could I give her my necklace?” she said.
It was the little necklace made of pieces of amethyst and topaz and
pearl and crystal, strung at intervals on a little golden chain, which
her Uncle Tom had given her. She was very fond of it. She looked at it
lovingly, when she had taken it from her neck.
“Is it valuable?” the man asked her, curiously.
“I think so,” she replied.
“The stones and pearl are real; it is worth three or four pounds,” said
Skrebensky from the wharf above. Ursula could tell he disapproved of
her.
“I _must_ give it to your baby—may I?” she said to the bargee.
He flushed, and looked away into the evening.
“Nay,” he said, “it’s not for me to say.”
“What would your father and mother say?” cried the woman curiously,
from the door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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