This was incontrovertible, and I asked her middle name. It was
Frances, and that was too like Francesca.

"You don't like the sound o' Benella?" she inquired. "I've always
set great store by my name, it is so unlikely. My father's name was
Benjamin and my mother's Ella, and mine is made from both of 'em;
but you can call me any kind of a name you please, after what you've
done for me," and she closed her eyes patiently.

'Call me Daphne, call me Chloris,
Call me Lalage or Doris,
Only, only call me thine,'

which is exactly what we are not ready to do, I thought, in a poetic
parenthesis.

Benella looks frail and yet hardy. She has an unusual and perhaps
unnecessary amount of imagination for her station, some native
common-sense, but limited experience; she is somewhat vague and
inconsistent in her theories of life, but I am sure there is
vitality, and energy too, in her composition, although it has been
temporarily drowned in the Atlantic Ocean. If she were a clock, I
should think that some experimenter had taken out her original
works, and substituted others to see how they would run. The clock
has a New England case and strikes with a New England tone, but the
works do not match it altogether. Of course I know that one does
not ordinarily engage a lady's-maid because of these piquant
peculiarities; but in our case the circumstances were extraordinary.
I have explained them fully to Himself in my letters, and Francesca
too has written pages of illuminating detail to Ronald Macdonald.