"Here you are, Marthy Bines!" he exclaimed, handing her a card; "here you are! read it! Mr. P. Percival Bines.' _Now_ don't you feel proud of havin' stuck out for Percival when you see it in cold print? You know mighty well his pa and me agreed to Percival only fur a middle name, jest to please you--and he wa'n't to be called by it;--only jest Peter or 'Peter P.' at most; and now look at the way he's gone and garbled his good name." Mr. P. Percival Bines blushed furiously here, but rejoined, nevertheless, with quiet dignity, that a man's name was something about which he should have the ruling voice, especially where it was possible for him to rectify or conceal the unhappy choice of his parents. "And while we're on names," he continued, "do try to remember in case you ever get among people, that Sis's name is Psyche and not Pish." The blond and complacent Miss Bines here moved uneasily in her patent blue plush rocker and spoke for the first time, with a grateful glance at her brother. "Yes, Uncle Peter, for mercy's sake, _do_ try! Don't make us a laughing-stock!" "But your name is Pish. A person's name is what their folks name 'em, ain't it? Your ma comes acrost a name in a book that she likes the looks of, and she takes it to spell Pish, and she ups and names you Pish, and we all calls you Pish and Pishy, and then when you toddle off to public school and let 'em know how you spell it they tell you it's something else--an outlandish name if spellin' means anything. If it comes to that you ought to change the spellin' instead of the name that your poor pa loved." Yet the old man had come to know that he was fighting a lost fight,--lost before it had ever begun. "It will be a good chance," ventured Mrs. Bines, timidly, "for Pishy--I mean Sike--Sicky--to meet the right sort of people." "Yes, I should _say_--and the wrong sort. The ingagin' host of them lady and gentlemen dogs, fur instance." "But Uncle Peter," broke in the young man, "you shouldn't expect a girl of Psyche's beauty and fortune to vegetate in Montana City all her life. Why, any sort of brilliant marriage is possible to her if she goes among the right people. Don't you want the family to amount to something socially? Is our money to do us no good? And do you think I'm going to stay here and be a moss-back and raise chin whiskers and work myself to death the way my father did?" "No, no," replied the old man, with a glance at the mother; "not _jest_ the way your pa did; you might do some different and some better; but all the same, you won't do any better'n he did any way you'll learn to live in New York. Unless you was to go broke there," he added, thoughtfully; "in that case you got the stuff in you and it'd come out; but you got too much money to go broke." "And you'll see that I lead a decent enough life. Times have changed since my father was a young man."