“Well, snubbed me, then.”

“Nor snubbed you.  I only want to be considerate and polite to Esther; that’s all.”

“What a horrid name she has!  Did you ever think of it, Laura—­Esther Bodn—­Bodn?”

“I don’t think it’s horrid at all.  I like it.”

“B-o-d-n—­Bodn—­it sounds awfully common.”

“Why, Kitty, it’s spelled B-o-w-d-o-i-n, the same as our Bowdoin Street, and pronounced Bod’n, as that is!”

“Is it, really?  I didn’t know that.”

“I’m sure Bowdoin Street sounds well enough.”

“Well, yes, I’ve always rather liked the sound of it; but then, you know, I always saw and felt the spelling, when I saw it.  What in the world was the pronunciation ever snipped off like that for?  It ought to be pronounced just as it is spelled.  I’ve a good mind to pronounce it so the next time I speak to Esther.”

“No, I wouldn’t do that; but you might think of her as Miss Bowdoin,” answered Laura, dryly.

“Oh, Laura, what a head full of wisdom you’ve got!  I don’t see how I ever lived without you.  But—­see here, tell me what street Miss Bowdoin lives in.”

Laura hesitated a moment; then answered, “McVane Street.”

“Where is McVane Street, for pity’s sake?  I never heard of it,—­one of those horrid South End streets, I suppose?”

“No, it is at the West End, beyond Cambridge Street, down by the Massachusetts Hospital.”

“No, no, Laura Brooks, you don’t mean that she lives down there by the wharves?”

“It isn’t by the wharves,” cried Laura, indignantly.

“Well, it isn’t far off.  One of the regular old tumble-down streets, given up long ago to cobblers and tinkers of all kinds, and you’re going to take tea with a girl who lives in that frowsy, dirty place!”

“It isn’t frowsy and dirty.  It’s only an old, unfashionable street, but not frowsy or dirty.  It’s quite clean and quiet, and has shade-trees and little grass plots to some of the houses.  Why, it used to be the court end of the town years ago.”

“So was North Bennet Street, and all the rest of the North End; and now it’s turned over to the rag-tag of creation,—­Russian Jews, and every other kind of a foreigner,—­and look here!” suddenly interrupting herself, as a new idea struck her, “I’ll bet you anything that this Esther Bodn is a foreigner,—­an emigrant herself of some sort.”

“Kitty!”

“Yes, I’ll bet you a pair of gloves,—­eight-buttoned ones,—­and I don’t believe her name is spelled at all like our Bowdoin Street.  I believe they—­her mother and she—­spell it that way to suit themselves.  I believe it’s just Bodn; and that is an outlandish foreign name, if I—­”

“Kitty, I think it’s positively wicked for you to talk like this,—­it’s slander.”

Kitty laughed, and, wagging her head to and fro, sang in a merry little undertone,—­