perfect…. Brant’s Mill,” there was a note of bitterness in his voice and he made the name almost deliberately rasping as he pronounced it. “It’s a name—something to call a place by—if you write it on a letter it will get there…. I suppose that’s what a name is for…. Gettysburg—I suppose a man named Gettys had a house or a farm, and so they named the town after him…. And your mother? What was the name of the place she came from?”
“It was a place called Yancey County.”
“Quite,” said Starwick as before—“and the name of the town?”
“There wasn’t any town, Frank. It was a kind of cross-roads settlement called The Forks of Ivy.”
“No!” Elinor’s light Bostonian accent of astounded merriment rang gaily forth. “Not really! You know it wasn’t!”
“But not at all!” said Starwick in a tone of mild and serious disagreement. “The Forks of Ivy is not bad. It’s really surprisingly good, when you consider most of the other names. It even has,” he paused, and considered carefully, “a kind of quality…. But Yancey,” he paused again, the burble of sudden laughter came welling up, and for a moment his pleasant ruddy face was flushed with laughter—“Ya-a-ancey County”—with deliberate malice he brought the word out in a rasping countrified tone—“God!” he said frankly, turning to the other boy, “isn’t it awful!… How harsh! How stupid! How banal!… And what are some of the names, where you come from, Gene?” he went on quietly after a brief pause. “I’m sure you haven’t yet done your worst,” he said. “There must be others just as sweet as Ya-a-ancey.”
“Well, yes,” the boy said grinning, “we’ve got some good ones: there’s Sandy Mush, and Hooper’s Bald, and Little Hominy. And we have names like Beaverdam and Balsam, and Chimney Rock and Craggy and Pisgah and The Rat. We have names like Old Fort, Hickory, and Bryson City; we have Clingman’s Dome and Little Switzerland; we have Paint Rock and Saluda Mountain and the Frying Pan Gap—”
“Stop!” shrieked Elinor, covering her ears with her shocked fingers—“The Frying Pan Gap! Oh, but that’s horrible!”
“But how perfect!” Starwick quietly replied. “The whole thing’s there. And in the great and noble region where I come from—” the note of weary bitterness in his tone grew deeper—“out where the tall caw-r-n grows we have Keokuk and Cairo and Peoria.” He paused, his grave eyes fixed in a serious and reflective stare: for a moment his pleasant ruddy face was contorted by the old bestial grimace of anguish and confusion.
