Coming out of the theatre John found himself humming tunes from the show. Originally he had been unsure about seeing Pirates of Penzance instead of their usual visit to the pantomime, but Professor Callum had said it would be just as much fun as the panto. When Dorothea had insisted that he came along with the others John finally relented and agreed to come too.
It had been a good evening after all, perhaps even better than a pantomime in some ways. He had got quite caught up in the music and silliness of the plot and had laughed along at the antics of the policemen and the pirates.
On the way back home in the train John thought of one of the characters, Ruth, the piratical maid of all work. The Ruth he knew insisted that she was called Nancy as Ruth was not suitable for a pirate because they are ruthless. But why Nancy he wondered? When she introduced herself as Nancy he accepted it without question.
Is Nancy a strange name for a pirate as well? At his school, and he imagined many others, any boy who did anything even slightly effeminate would get called a nancy. It had happened to him when he flunked a tackle at rugger. So why had the captain of the Amazon pirates decided on Nancy? Is it her middle name? In the two and half years he had known her why had he never thought to ask?
The problemis he can only think of her as Nancy. Ruth was another girl, dressed in a flouncy frock and sitting primly beside her Great Aunt Maria. Ruth was not the carefree sailor with a dozen exciting ideas of what to do. No, he decided, he does not know a Ruth, but he most certainly knows a Nancy, and cannot think of a better name.
