Pixie O'Shaughnessy was at once the joy and terror of the school. It had been a quiet, well-conducted seminary before her time, or it seemed so, at least, looking back after the arrival of the wild Irish tornado, before whose pranks the mild mischief of the Englishers was as water unto wine. Pixie was entered in the school-lists as "Patricia Monica de Vere O'Shaughnessy," but no one ever addressed her by such a title, not even her home-people, by whom the name was considered at once as a tragedy and a joke of the purest ...
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Pixie O'Shaughnessy was at once the joy and terror of the school. It had been a quiet, well-conducted seminary before her time, or it seemed so, at least, looking back after the arrival of the wild Irish tornado, before whose pranks the mild mischief of the Englishers was as water unto wine. Pixie was entered in the school-lists as "Patricia Monica de Vere O'Shaughnessy," but no one ever addressed her by such a title, not even her home-people, by whom the name was considered at once as a tragedy and a joke of the purest water. Mrs O'Shaughnessy had held stern ideas about fanciful names for her children, on which subject she had often waxed eloquent to her friends. "What," she would ask, "could be more trying to a large and bouncing young woman than to find herself saddled for life with the title of 'Ivy, ' or for a poor anaemic creature to pose as 'Ruby' before a derisive world?" She christened her own first daughter Bridget, and the second Joan, and the three boys respectively Jack, Miles, and Patrick, resolutely waving aside suggestions of more poetic names even when they touched her fancy, or appealed to her imagination. Better err on the safe side, and safeguard oneself from the risk of having a brood of plain, awkward children masquerading through life under names which made them a laughing-stock to their companions.
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