“She can hardly be named Lizzie, I think, Mary Anne,” returned Miss Peecher, in a tunefully instructive voice. “Is Lizzie a Christian name, Mary Anne?”

Mary Anne laid down her work, rose, hooked herself behind, as being under catechization, and replied: “No, it is a corruption, Miss Peecher.”

“Who gave her that name?” Miss Peecher was going on, from the mere force of habit, when she checked herself; on Mary Anne’s evincing theological impatience to strike in with her godfathers and her godmothers, and said: “I mean of what name is it a corruption?”

“Elizabeth, or Eliza, Miss Peecher.”

“Right, Mary Anne. Whether there were any Lizzies in the early Christian Church must be considered very doubtful, very doubtful.” Miss Peecher was exceedingly sage here. “Speaking correctly, we say, then, that Hexam’s sister is called Lizzie; not that she is named so. Do we not, Mary Anne?”

“We do, Miss Peecher.”