'May I ask you,' he said, 'what is the name of--' 'Tattycoram?' Mr Meagles struck in. 'I have not the least idea.' 'I thought,' said the other, 'that--' 'Tattycoram?' suggested Mr Meagles again. 'Thank you--that Tattycoram was a name; and I have several times
wondered at the oddity of it.'
'Why, the fact is,' said Mr Meagles, 'Mrs Meagles and myself are, you
see, practical people.' 'That you have frequently mentioned in the course of the agreeable and
interesting conversations we have had together, walking up and down on
these stones,' said the other, with a half smile breaking through the
gravity of his dark face. 'Practical people. So one day, five or six years ago now, when we took
Pet to church at the Foundling--you have heard of the Foundling Hospital
in London? Similar to the Institution for the Found Children in Paris?'
'I have seen it.' 'Well! One day when we took Pet to church there to hear the
music--because, as practical people, it is the business of our lives to
show her everything that we think can please her--Mother (my usual name
for Mrs Meagles) began to cry so, that it was necessary to take her out.
"What's the matter, Mother?" said I, when we had brought her a little
round: "you are frightening Pet, my dear." "Yes, I know that, Father,"
says Mother, "but I think it's through my loving her so much, that it
ever came into my head." "That ever what came into your head, Mother?"
"O dear, dear!" cried Mother, breaking out again, "when I saw all those
children ranged tier above tier, and appealing from the father none of
them has ever known on earth, to the great Father of us all in Heaven,
I thought, does any wretched mother ever come here, and look among those
young faces, wondering which is the poor child she brought into this
forlorn world, never through all its life to know her love, her kiss,
her face, her voice, even her name!" Now that was practical in Mother,
and I told her so. I said, "Mother, that's what I call practical in you,
my dear."' The other, not unmoved, assented.
'So I said next day: Now, Mother, I have a proposition to make that I
think you'll approve of. Let us take one of those same little children
to be a little maid to Pet. We are practical people. So if we should
find her temper a little defective, or any of her ways a little wide
of ours, we shall know what we have to take into account. We shall
know what an immense deduction must be made from all the influences and
experiences that have formed us--no parents, no child-brother or sister,
no individuality of home, no Glass Slipper, or Fairy Godmother. And
that's the way we came by Tattycoram.' 'And the name itself--'