I have since found out that whenever she was at fault she composed a name upon the spot, with the ready wit and desire to please characteristic of her nation.

These names were chiefly connected with the Blessed Virgin and the saints.
"The Lord blesh ye, my dear," she would say; "that's 'Mary's flower';" or, "Sure it's the 'Blessed Virgin's spinning-wheel,' and a pretty name too!" A bitter-smelling herb which she commended to me as "Saints' Savory," I afterwards learned to be tansy.
The youngest of us, a small, silent little orphan, had bought no posy till one day she quietly observed, "If you could get me a peony, I would buy it." The peony was procured; so large, so round, and so red, that some one unfeelingly suggested that it should be cut up for pickled cabbage.

The little miss walked home with it in her hand, looking at it as sentimentally as if it had been a forget-me-not.

As we had been hard-hearted enough to laugh at it, we never learned the history which made it dear.
Madame would certainly never have allowed us to break our ranks, and chaffer with Bridget, but that some one had been lucky enough to think of giving her bouquets.
Madame liked flowers--as ornaments--and was sentimental herself, after a fashion, a sentimentality of appearances.

She liked a bright spot of colour on her sombre dresses too, and she was economical; for every day that she had a bright bouquet a day's wear and tear was saved to her neck-ribbons.