“I think people who make love in public should be locked up,” said he.

“Some folks wants everybody put away that enjoys themselves,” said Cordelia.  Then, lest she had spoken too strongly, she added, “Present company not intended, Mr. Fletcher, but you said that like them mission folks that come around praising themselves and tellin’ us all we’re wicked.”

“And do you think a girl can be good who behaves so in public?”

“I know plenty that’s done it,” said she; “and I don’t know any girls but what’s good.  They ’ain’t got wings, maybe, but you don’t want to monkey with ’em, neither.”

He recollected her words for many a year afterward and pondered them, and perhaps they enlarged his understanding.  She also often thought of his condemnation of love-making out-of-doors.  Kissing in public, especially promiscuous kissing, she knew to be a debatable pastime, but she also knew that there was not a flat in the Big Barracks in which a girl could carry on a courtship.  Fancy her attempting it in her front room, with the room choked with people, with the baby squalling, and her little brothers and sisters quarrelling, with her mother entertaining half a dozen women visitors with tea or beer, and with a man or two dropping in to smoke with her father!  Parlor courtship was to her, like precise English, a thing only known in novels.  The thought of novels floated her soul back into the dream state.

“I think Cordelia’s a pretty name,” said Fletcher, cold at heart but struggling to be companionable.

“I don’t,” said Cordelia.  “I’m not at all crushed on it.  Your name’s terrible pretty.  I think my three names looks like a map of Ireland when they’re written down.  I know a killin’ name for a girl.  It’s Clarice.  Maybe some day I’ll give you a dare.  I’ll double dare you, maybe, to call me Clarice.”

Oh, if he only would, she thought—­if he would only call her so now!  But she forgot how unelastic his strange routine of life must have left him, and she did not dream how her behavior in the park had displeased him.

“Cordelia is a pretty name,” he repeated.  “At any rate, I think we should try to make the most and best of whatever name has come to us.  I wouldn’t sail under false colors for a minute.”

“Oh!” said she, with a giggle to hide her disappointment; “you’re so terrible wise!  When you talk them big words you can pass me in a walk.”

Anxious to display her great conquest to the other girls of the Barracks neighborhood, Cordelia persuaded Mr. Fletcher to go to what she called “the dock,” to enjoy the cool breath of the river.  All the piers and wharves are called “docks” by the people.  Those which are semi-public and are rented to miscellaneous excursion and river steamers are crowded nightly.