As she pronounced this name, which she did with oppressive distinctness, the young man winced as at the twinge of an old wound reopened. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he said, plaintively. “It isn’t ‘fair’ for me to choose whom I care to see in my own house?” Mrs. Dodge inquired with perfect hypocrisy, for she knew what he meant. “I’m talking about ‘Oswald’,” he explained. “I can’t help my name, and I don’t think it’s fair to taunt me with it. My parents did have me christened ‘Oswald,’ I admit; but they were sorry when I got older and they saw how I felt about it and what it would do to me. You know as well as I do, Mrs. Dodge, I’ve struggled pretty long to get people to quit calling me ‘Oswald,’ and almost everybody calls me Crabbe now. It isn’t a very good middle name, but anyhow it’s better than——” “Good heavens!” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “Are you going to stand here all morning talking about your _name_? I’m afraid you overlook the circumstance that you’ve been requested to leave my house.” “I know it,” he said, apologetically. “But it really isn’t fair to call me ‘Oswald’ any more, when practically nobody else does, and that’s what threw me off. What I came here for, I had to see Lily.” “_I_ had to see _you_!” Lily cried from the sofa. “If I hadn’t, I should have died!” And at a scornful look from her mother, she passionately insisted upon the accuracy of this view. “Oh, yes, I should, Mamma! You don’t _know_ what you and Papa have been putting me through! You don’t _know_ what it does to me! You don’t know what it’s making me suffer! You don’t understand!” “I understand too much, unfortunately,” the mother retorted. “I understand that you’ve got yourself into such a hysterical state over a young man who couldn’t possibly buy a pair of shoes for you—or for himself!—and that your father and I daren’t let you step out of the house alone for fear you’ll try to run away with him again.” Young Mr. Osborne protested with some heat. “Why, I’m not barefooted, Mrs. Dodge!” he said. “What I came here to say this morning is right on the point you’re discussing. You and Mr. Dodge haven’t once been fair to me during the whole trouble we’ve had about this matter, and when you say I couldn’t even give Lily a pair of shoes——” “Could you?” Mrs. Dodge inquired, breathing deeply. “Am I misinformed by my husband? I seem to recall he told me that when you and Lily were eloping last week—in a borrowed car—he overtook you at a refilling station, where she was offering her watch and rings for gasoline.” “I didn’t ask her to,” Crabbe Osborne said, flushing deeper. “I admit she offered ’em, but I was arguing about it with her when Mr. Dodge got there. Anyhow, the gas man wouldn’t take ’em.” “Oh, he should have!” Lily moaned. “Then we wouldn’t have all this to go through. We’d have been out of it all. We’d have been together for always!”