Much like her niece, Maude Thistlethwaite did not precisely dislike her surname, but did find it both inconvenient and irritating that almost everyone found it difficult to pronounce. Unlike her niece, Maude had found this to be the case even with ostensibly well-spoken gentlemen and women from her own part of the world. She had, therefore, made the determination that she did not wish to be tied to her name, and began plotting from a very early age indeed to leave it behind. Most of her class and generation would have chosen to do this by means of marriage, but Maude had never met any man she
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