Chapter I · (continued 2)

On Christmas Eve, the last evening that Norah would spend at home for some time, she decided in an access of honesty to tell Dorothy that she had taken her name for purposes of the stage. Most unreasonably, Dorothy protested loudly against this, and it transpired in the course of the dispute that she had all her life resented being the only one of the family who had not been given two names. Norah's own second name, Charlotte, which was also her mother's, had never struck her before as anything in the nature of an asset, but now with much generosity she offered to lend it to Dorothy, who refused it as scornfully as she could without hurting her mother's feelings.

"Why couldn't you have taken Lina or Florence or Amy or Maud?" Dorothy demanded. These were the second names of the other sisters. "And, anyway, what's the matter with your own name?"

"I don't know," said Norah. "Dorothy Lonsdale struck me as a good combination, and the more I think of it the better I like it."

"Lonsdale," everybody repeated. "Are you going to call yourself Lonsdale?"

"It's the family name," Norah reminded them.

This was quite true; Lonsdale had been the maiden name of Mrs. Caffyn's mother, who, according to a family legend, had been a distant kinswoman of Lord Cleveden. Indeed, before Mr. Caffyn was married he had often used this connection to overcome his father's opposition to a long engagement. When he had bought the house in Lonsdale Road he had liked to think for a while that in a way he was doing something to restore the prestige of a distant collateral branch; the transaction had possessed a flavor of winning back an old estate. Naturally, as he grew older, he ceased to attach the same importance to mere birth, especially when he found that he did not require any self-assertion to get on perfectly well with the bishops who came to consult him about diocesan scandals. Therefore he was inclined to take his eldest daughter's part and applaud her choice of a stage name.

"But suppose I wanted to go on the stage myself?" Dorothy insisted. "I might want to use my own name."

"Well, so you could," Norah urged. "You could be Miss Dorothy Caffyn. But you won't go on the stage, so what's the good of arguing like that? Anyway, I've signed the contract as Dorothy Lonsdale, so there's nothing to be done. I can't change."

"I do think it's mean of you," expostulated the real Dorothy, bursting into tears.

Norah would not allow anybody to come and see her off at Euston on Christmas morning, and Mr. Caffyn, who did not at all like the idea of a four-wheeler's waiting outside his house on such a day, helped his daughter's plans by marshaling the whole family for church half an hour earlier than usual, so that the farewells were said indoors. Lily had left the flat a fortnight ago and, having been staying in some Bloomsbury lodgings recommended by her sister, was to meet her friend at the station. At a quarter to eleven, amid the clangor of church bells, the cab of Norah Caffyn turned out of Lonsdale Road into the main street of West Kensington, and at noon on the platform at Euston Miss Lily Haden wished a Merry Christmas to Miss Dorothy Lonsdale.