Tim

Tim’s real name was not Tim: so much is certain. What it was, I have never inquired. The nickname had been bestowed on him so early in life that the memory of such men and women as knew him ran not to the contrary. Tim was Tim by immemorial custom; even his father, who had little reverence for established usages, never thought of altering this one, and, as one name is as good as another, we too will call him by the only one by which he was ever known.

Tim was a slightly-made, lean, brown child, but without the pretty colour brown children usually have. He had such regular little features and such a pale little face that he might almost have been called faded, had he ever looked otherwise. Mrs. Quitchett had pronounced him to be ‘the thinnest and lightest baby ever she see,’ when he was transferred to her care from that of the monthly nurse, in which opinion she was supported by that lady, who might be said to be an authority on such matters. Possibly she too might throw some light on the question of how he came by that pre-baptismal nickname of his, for she alone had had much to do with him previous to the day when he had been carried, a poor little skinny Christian-elect, to be received into the pale of the Church.