Vera tossed her head; and Thekla ran in to say that Sister was ready.

The walk was shorter and pleasanter than that in the morning, over
moorland, but with a good road; but all Magdalen discovered on the
walk was that though the girls had attended botanical classes, they
did not recognise spear-wort when they saw it, and Agatha thought the
old catalogue fashions of botany were quite exploded. This was a
sentiment, and it gave hopes of something like an argument and a
conversation, but they were at that moment overtaken by the
neighbouring farmer's wife, who wanted to give Miss Prescott some
information about a setting of eggs, which she did at some length,
and with a rapid utterance of dialect that amused, while it puzzled,
Magdalen, and her inquiries and comments were decided to be
"thoroughly good-wife" by all save Thekla, who hailed the possible
ownership of a hen and chicken as almost equal to that of a bicycle.

Magdalen further discovered that Thekla's name in common use was
"Tickle," or else "Tick-tick"; Paulina was, of course, Paula or
Polly; Vera had her old baby title of Flapsy, which somehow suited
her restless nervous motions, and Agatha had become Nag. Well, it
was the fashion of the day, though not a pretty one; but Magdalen
recollected, with some pain, her father's pleasure in the selection
of saintly names for his little daughters, and she wondered how he
would have liked to hear them thus transmuted. There had been
something bordering on sentiment in her father's character, and
something in Paulina's expression made her hope to see it repeated by
inheritance. She saw the countenance brighten out of the morning's
antagonistic air when they entered the little chapel at Clipstone,
and saw the altar adorned and carefully decked with white narcissus
and golden daffodils.