TAG DAY AT TORCHY’S

Course, in a way, it was our fault, I expect. We never should have let on that there was any hitch about what we was goin’ to name the baby. Blessed if I know now just how it got around. I remember Vee and I havin’ one or two little talks on the subject, but I don’t think we’d tackled the proposition real serious.

You see, at first we were too busy sort of gettin’ used to havin’ him around and framin’ up a line on this parent act we was supposed to put over. Anyway, I was. And for three or four weeks, there, I called him anything that came handy, from Young Sport to Old Snoodlekins. Vee she sticks to Baby. Uh-huh just plain Baby. But the way she says it, breathin’ it out kind of soft and gentle, sounded perfectly all right to me.

And the youngster didn’t seem to have any kick comin’. He was gettin’ so he’d look up and coo real intelligent when she speaks to him in that fashion. You couldn’t blame him, for it was easy to listen to.

As for the different things I called him well, he didn’t mind them, either. No matter what it was, Old Pink Toes or Wiggle-heels, he’d generally pass it off with a smile, providin’ he wasn’t too busy with his bottle or tryin’ to get hold of his foot with both of his hands.

Then one day Auntie, who’s been listenin’ disapprovin’ all the while, just can’t hold in any longer.

“Isn’t it high time,” says she, “that you addressed the child properly by his right name?”

“Eh?” says I, gawpin’. “Which one?”

“You don’t mean to say,” she goes on, “that you have not yet decided on his baptismal name?”

“I didn’t know he was a Baptist,” says I feeble.

“We hadn’t quite settled what to call him,” says Vee.

“Besides,” I adds, “I don’t see the use bein’ in a rush about it. Maybe were’re savin’ that up.”

“Saving!” says Auntie. “For what reason?”

“Oh, general conservation,” says I. “Got the habit. We’ve had heatless Mondays and wheatless Wednesdays and fryless Fridays and sunless Sundays, so why not nameless babies?”

Auntie sniffs and goes off with her nose in the air, as she always does whenever I spring any of my punk persiflage on her.

But then Vee takes it up, and says Auntie is right and that we really ought to decide on a name and begin using it.

“Oh, very well,” says I. “I’ll be thinking one up.”

Seemed simple enough. Course, I’d never named any babies before, but I had an idea I could dig out half a dozen good, serviceable monickers between then and dinner-time.

Somehow, though, I couldn’t seem to hit on anything that I was willing to wish on to the youngster offhand. When I got right up against the problem, it seemed kind of serious.

Why, here was something he’d have to live with all his life; us, too. We’d have to say it over maybe a hundred times a day. And if he grew up and amounted to anything, as we was sure he would, it would mean that this front name of his that I had to pick out might be displayed more or less prominent. It would be on his office door, on his letterheads, on his cards. He’d sign it to checks.

Maybe it would be printed in the newspapers, used in headlines, or painted on campaign banners. Might be displayed on billboards. Who could tell?

And the deeper I got into the thing the more I wabbled about from one name to another, until I wondered how people had the nerve to give their children some of the tags you hear Percy, Isadore, Lulu, Reginald, and so on. And do it so casual, too. Why, I knew of a couple who named their three girls after parlor-cars; and a gink in Brooklyn who called one of his boys Prospect, after the park. Think of loadin’ a helpless youngster with anything freaky like that!

Besides, how were you going to know that even the best name you could pick wouldn’t turn out to be a misfit? About the only Percy I ever knew in real life was a great two-fisted husk who was foreman of a stereotypin’ room; and here in the Corrugated Buildin’, if you’ll come in some night after five, I can show you a wide built scrub lady, with hair redder’n mine and a voice like a huckster her front name is Violet. Yet I expect, when them two was babies, both those names sounded kind of cute. I could see where it would be easy enough for me to make a mistake that it would take a court order to straighten out.

So, when Vee asks if I’ve made any choice yet I had to admit that I’m worse muddled up on the subject than when I started in. All I can do is hand over a list I’ve copied down on the back of an envelop with every one of ’em checked off as no good.

“Let’s see,” says Vee, glancin’ ’em over curious. “Lester. Why, I’m sure that is rather a nice name for a boy.”

“Yes,” says I; “but after I put it down I remembered a Lester I knew once. He was a simp that wore pink neckties and used to write love-letters to Mary Pickford.”

“What about Earl?” she asks.

“Too flossy,” says I. “Sounds like you was tryin’ to let on he belonged to the aristocracy.”

“Well, Donald, then,” says she. “That’s a good, sensible name.”

“But we ain’t Scotch,” I objects.

“What’s the matter with Philip?” says Vee.

“I can never remember whether it has one l and two p’s or the other way round.”

“But you haven’t considered any of the common ones,” goes on Vee, “such as John or William or Thomas or James or Arthur.”

“Because that would mean he’d be called Bill or Tom or Art,” says I. “Besides, I kind of thought he ought to have something out of the usual run one you wouldn’t forget as soon as you heard it.”

“If I may suggest,” breaks in Auntie, “the custom of giving the eldest son the family name of his mother is rather a good one. Had you considered Hemmingway?”

I just gasps and glances at Vee. What if she should fall for anything like that! Think of smotherin’ a baby under most of the alphabet all at one swoop! And imagine a boy strugglin’ through schooldays and vacations with all that tied to him.

Hemmingway! Why, he’d grow up round-shouldered and knock-kneed, and most likely turn out to be a floor-walker in the white goods department, or the manager of a gift-shop tearoom. Hemmingway!

Just the thought of it made me dizzy; and I begun breathin’ easier when I saw Vee shake her head.

“He’s such a little fellow, Auntie,” says she. “Wouldn’t that be well, rather topheavy?”

Which disposes of Auntie. She admits maybe it would. But from then on, as the news seems to spread that we was havin’ a kind of deadlock with the namin’ process, the volunteers got busy. Old Leon Battou, our butler-cook, hinted that his choice would be Emil.

“For six generations,” says he, “Emil has been the name of the first-born son in our family.”

“That’s stickin’ to tradition,” says I. “It sounds perfectly swell, too, when you know how to pronounce it. But, you see, we’re foundin’ a new dynasty.”

Mr. Robert don’t say so outright, but he suggests that Ellins Ballard wouldn’t be such a bad combination.

“True,” he adds, “the governor and I deserve no such distinction; but I’m sure we would both be immensely flattered. And there’s no telling how reckless we might be when it come to presenting christening cups and that sort of thing.”

“That’s worth rememberin’,” says I. “And I expect you wouldn’t mind, in case you had a boy to name later on, callin’ him Torchy, eh!”

Mr. Robert grins. “Entry withdrawn,” says he.

How this Amelia Gaston Leroy got the call to crash in on our little family affair, though, I couldn’t quite dope out. We never suspected before that she was such an intimate friend of ours. Course, since we’d been livin’ out in the Piping Rock section we had seen more or less of her more, as a rule. She was built that way.

Oh, yes. Amelia was one of the kind that could bounce in among three or four people in a thirty by forty-five living-room and make the place seem crowded. Mr. Robert’s favorite description of her was that one half of Amelia didn’t know how the other half lived. To state it plain, Amelia was some whale of a girl. One look at her, and you did no more guessin’ as to what caused the food shortage.

I got the shock of my life, too, when they told me she was the one that wrote so much of this mushy magazine poetry you see printed. For all the lady poétesses I’d ever seen had been thin, shingled-chested parties with mud-colored hair and soulful eyes.

There was nothing thin about Amelia. Her eyes might have been soulful enough at times, but mostly I’d seen ’em fixed on a tray of sandwiches or a plate of layer cake.

They’d had her up at the Ellinses’ once or twice when they were givin’ one of their musical evenin’s, and she’d spouted some of her stuff.

Her first call on us, though, was when she blew in last Sunday afternoon and announced that she’d come to see “that dear, darling man child” of ours. And for a girl of her size Amelia is some breeze, take it from me. Honest, for the first ten minutes or so there I felt like our happy little home had been hit by a young tornado.

“Where is he?” she demands. “Please take me at once into the regal presence of his youthful majesty.”

I noticed Vee sizin’ her up panicky, and I knew she was thinkin’ of what might happen to them spindle-legged white chairs in the nursery.

“How nice of you to want to see him!” says Vee. “But let me have Baby brought down here. Just a moment.”

And she steers her towards a solid built davenport that we’d been meanin’ to have reupholstered anyway. Then we was treated to a line of high-brow gush as Amelia inspects the youngster through her shell lorgnette and tries to tell us in impromptu blank verse how wonderful he is.

“Ah, he is one of the sun children, loved of the high gods,” says she, rollin’ her eyes. “He comes to you wearing the tints of dawn and trailing clouds of glory. You remember how Wordsworth puts it?”

As she fires this straight at me, I has to say something.

“Does he?” I asks.

“I am always impressed,” she gurgles on, “by the calm serenity in the eyes of these little ones. It is as if they ”

But just then Snoodlekins begins screwin’ up his face. He’s never been mauled around by a lady poetess before, or maybe it was just because there was so much of her. Anyway, he tears loose with a fine large howl and the serenity stuff is all off. It takes Vee four or five minutes to soothe him.

Meanwhile Miss Leroy gets around to statin’ the real reason why we’re bein’ honored.

“I understand,” says she, “that you have not as yet chosen a name for him. So I am going to help you. I adore it. I have always wanted to name a baby, and I’ve never been allowed. Think of that! My brother has five children, too; but he would not listen to any of my suggestions.

“So I am aunt to a Walter who should have been called Clifford, and a Margaret whom I wanted to name Beryl, and so on. Even my laundress preferred to select names for her twins from some she had seen on a circus poster rather than let me do it for her.

“But I am sure you are rational young people, and recognize that I have some natural talent in that direction. Names! Why, I have made a study of them. I must, you see, in my writing. And this dear little fellow deserves something fitting. Now let me see. Ah, I have it! He shall be Cedric after Cedric the Red, you know.”

Accordin’ to her, it was all settled. She heaves herself up off the davenport, straightens her hat, and prepares to leave, smilin’ satisfied, like an expert who’s been called in and has finished the job.

“We we will consider Cedric,” says Vee. “Thank you so much.”

“Oh, not at all,” says Amelia. “Of course, if I should happen to think of anything better within the next few days I will let you know at once.” And out she floats.

Vee gazes after her and sighs.

“I suppose Cedric is rather a good name,” says she, “but somehow I don’t feel like using one that a stranger has picked out for us. Do you, Torchy?”

“You’ve said it,” says I. “I’d sooner let her buy my neckties, or tell me how I should have my eggs cooked for breakfast.”

“And yet,” says Vee, “unless we can think of something better ”

“We will,” says I. “I’m goin’ through them pages in the back of the big dictionary.”

In less’n half an hour there’s a knock at the door, and here’s a chauffeur come with a note from Amelia. On the way home she’s had another hunch.

“After all,” she writes, “Cedric seems rather too harsh, too rough-shod. So I have decided on Lucian.”

“Huh!” says I. “She’s decided, has she? Say, whose tag day is this, anyway ours or hers?”

Vee shrugs her shoulders.

“I’m not sure that we should like calling him Lucian; it’s so so ”

“I know,” says I, “so perfectly sweet. Say, can’t we block Amelia off somehow? Suppose I send back word that a rich step-uncle has promised to leave him a ton of coal if we call the baby Ebenezer after him?”

Vee chuckles.

“Oh, no doubt she’ll forget all about it by morning,” says she.

Seems we’d just begun hearin’ from the outside districts, though, or else they’d been savin’ up their ideas for this particular afternoon and evenin’; for between then and nine o’clock no less’n half a dozen different parties dropped in, every last one of ’em with a name to register. And their contributions ranged all the way from Aaron to Xury. There were two rooters for Woodrow and one for Pershing.

Some of the neighbors were real serious about it. They told us what a time they’d had namin’ some of their children, brought up cases where families had been busted up over such discussions, and showed us where their choice couldn’t be beat. One merry bunch from the Country Club thought they was pullin’ something mighty humorous when they stopped in to tell us how they’d held a votin’ contest on the subject, and that the winnin’ combination was, Paul Roger.

“After something you read on a cork, eh?” says I. “Much obliged. And I hope nobody strained his intellect.”

“The idea!” says Vee, after they’ve rolled off. “Voting on such a thing at a club! Just as if Baby was a battleship, or a a new moving-picture place. I think that’s perfectly horrid of them.”

“It was fresh, all right,” says I. “But I expect we got to stand for such guff until we can give out that we’ve found a name that suits us. Lemme tackle that list again. Now, how would Russell do? Russell Ballard? No; too many l’s and r’s. Here’s Chester. And I expect the boys would call him Chesty. Then there’s Clyde. But there’s steamship line by that name. What about Stanley? Oh, yes; he was an explorer.”

I admit I was gettin’ desperate about then. I was flounderin’ around in a whole ocean of names, long ones and short ones, fancy and plain, yet I couldn’t quite make up my mind. I’d mussed my hair, shed my collar, and scribbled over sheets and sheets of paper, without gettin’ anywhere at all. And when I gave up and turned in about eleven-thirty, my head was so muddled I wouldn’t have had the nerve to have named a pet kitten.

I must have just dozed off to sleep when I hears this bell ringin’ somewhere. I couldn’t quite make out whether it was a fire alarm, or the z’s in the back of the dictionary goin’ off, when Vee calls out that it’s the ’phone.

I tumbles out and paws around for the extension.

“Wha-what?” says I. “What the blazes! Ye-uh. This is me. Wha-wha’s matter?”

And then comes this gurgly voice at the other end of the wire. It’s our old friend Amelia.

“Do you know,” says she, “I have just thought of the loveliest name for your dear baby.”

“Oh, have you?” says I, sort of crisp.

“Yes,” says she, “and I simply couldn’t wait until morning to tell you. Now listen it’s Ethelbert.”

“Ethel-Bert!” says I, gaspy. “Say, you know he’s no mixed foursome.”

“No, no,” says she. Ethelbert one name, after the old Saxon king. Ethelbert Ballard. “Isn’t that just perfect? And I am so glad it came to me.”

I couldn’t agree with her real enthusiastic, so it’s lucky she hung up just as she did.

“Huh!” I remarks to Vee. “Why not Maryjim or Daisybill? Say, I think our friend Amelia must have gone off her hinge.”

But Vee only yawns and advises me to go to sleep and forget it. Well, I tried. You know how it is, though, when you’ve been jolted out of the feathers just as you’re halfway through the first reel of the slumber stuff. I couldn’t get back, to save me.

I counted sheep jumpin’ over a wall, I tried lookin’ down a railroad track until I could seen the rails meet, and I spelled Constantinople backwards. Nothing doing in the Morpheus act.

I was wider awake then than a new taxi driver makin’ his first trip up Broadway. I could think of swell names for seashore cottages, for new surburban additions, and for other people’s babies. I invented an explosive pretzel that would win the war. I thought of bills I ought to pay next week sure, and of what I meant to tell the laundryman if he kept on making hash of my pet shirts.

Then I got to wonderin’ about this old-maid poetess. Was she through for the night, or did she work double shifts? If she wasn’t any nearer sleep than I was she might think up half a dozen substitutes for Ethelbert before mornin’. Would she insist on springin’ each one on me as they hit her?

Maybe she was gettin’ ready to call me again now. Should I pretend not to hear and let her ring, or would it be better to answer and let on that this was Police Headquarters?

Honest, I got so fidgety waitin’ for that buzzer to go off that I could almost hear the night operator pluggin’ in on our wire.

And then a thought struck me that wouldn’t let go. So, slippin’ out easy and throwin’ on a bath-robe, I sneaked downstairs to the back hall ’phone, turned on the light, and hunted up Miss Leroy’s number in the book.

“Give her a good strong ring, please,” says I to Exchange, “and keep it up until you rouse somebody.”

“Leave it to me,” says the operator. And in a minute or so I gets this throaty “Hello!”

“Miss Leroy?” says I.

“Yes,” says she. “Who is calling?”

“Ballard,” says I. “I’m the fond parent of the nameless baby. And say, do you still stick to Ethelbert?”

“Why,” says she, “I er ”

“I just wanted to tell you,” I goes on, “that this guessin’ contest closes at 3 A.M., and if you want to make any more entries you got only forty minutes to get ’em in. Nighty-night.”

And I rings off just as she begins sputterin’ indignant.

That seems to help a lot, and inside of five minutes I’m snoozin’ peaceful.

It was next mornin’ at breakfast that Vee observes offhand, as though the subject hadn’t been mentioned before:

“About naming the baby, now.”

“Ye-e-es?” says I, smotherin’ a groan.

“Why couldn’t we call him after you?” she asks.

“Not not Richard Junior?” says I.

“Well, after both of us, then,” says she. “Richard Hemmingway. It it is what I’ve wanted to name him all along.”

“You have?” says I. “Well, for the love of ”

“You didn’t ask me, that’s why,” says she.

“Why why, so I didn’t,” says I. “And say, Vee, I don’t know who’s got a better right. As for my part of the name, I’ve used it so little it’s almost as good as new. Richard Hemmingway Ballard it shall be.”

“Oh, I’m so glad,” says she. “Of course, I did want you to be the one to pick it out; but if you’re satisfied with ”

“Satisfied!” says I. “Why, I’m tickled to pieces. And here you had that up your sleeve all the while!”

Vee smiles and nods.

“We must have the christening very soon,” says she, “so everyone will know.”

“You bet!” says I. “And I’ve a good notion to put it on the train bulletin down at the station, too. First off, though, we’d better tell young Richard himself and see how he likes it. I expect, though, unless his next crop of hair comes out a different tint from this one, that he’ll have to answer to ‘Young Torchy’ for a good many years.”

“Oh, yes,” says Vee; “but I’m sure he won’t mind that in the least.”

“Good girl!” says I, movin’ round where I can express my feelin’s better.

“Don’t!” says Vee. “You’ll spill the coffee.”