Desire Ledwith, a girl of sixteen, spoke suddenly from a corner where she sat with a book,—­

“I do wonder who ‘they’ are, mamma!”

“Who?” said Mrs. Ledwith, half rising from her chair, and letting some breadths of silk slide down upon the floor from her lap, as she glanced anxiously from the window down the avenue.  She did not want any company this morning.

“Not that, mamma; I don’t mean anybody coming.  The ‘theys’ that wear, and don’t wear, things; the theys you have to be just like, and keep ripping and piecing for.”

“You absurd child!” exclaimed Mrs. Ledwith, pettishly.  “To make me spill a whole lapful of work for that!  They?  Why, everybody, of course.”

“Everybody complains of them, though.  Jean Friske says her mother is all discouraged and worn out.  There isn’t a thing they had last year that won’t have to be made over this, because they put in a breadth more behind, and they only gore side seams.  And they don’t wear black capes or cloth sacks any more with all kinds of dresses; you must have suits, clear through.  It seems to me ‘they’ is a nuisance.  And if it’s everybody, we must be part, of it.  Why doesn’t somebody stop?”

“Desire, I wish you’d put away your book, and help, instead of asking silly questions.  You can’t make the world over, with ’why don’ts?’”

“I’ll rip,” said Desire, with a slight emphasis; putting her book down, and coming over for a skirt and a pair of scissors.  “But you know I’m no good at putting together again.  And about making the world over, I don’t know but that might be as easy as making over all its clothes, I’d as lief try, of the two.”

Desire was never cross or disagreeable; she was only “impracticable,” her mother said.  “And besides that, she didn’t know what she really did want.  She was born hungry and asking, with those sharp little eyes, and her mouth always open while she was a baby.  ‘It was a sign,’ the nurse said, when she was three weeks old.  And then the other sign,—­that she should have to be called ‘Desire!’”

Mrs. Megilp—­for Mrs. Megilp had been in office as long ago as that—­had suggested ways of getting over or around the difficulty, when Aunt Desire had stipulated to have the baby named for her, and had made certain persuasive conditions.

“There’s the pretty French turn you might give it,—­’Desiree.’  Only one more ‘e,’ and an accent.  That is so sweet, and graceful, and distinguished!”

“But Aunt Desire won’t have the name twisted.  It is to be real, plain Desire, or not at all.”

Mrs. Megilp had shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, of course it can be that, to christen by, and marry by, and be buried by.  But between whiles,—­people pick up names,—­you’ll see!”

Mrs. Megilp began to call her “Daisy” when she was two years old.  Nobody could help what Mrs. Megilp took a fancy to call her by way of endearment, of course; and Daisy she was growing to be in the family, when one day, at seven years old, she heard Mrs. Megilp say to her mother,—­