"Do not feel too bad about my having not heard of them, my dear, I am just in from my home in the north and it takes ages for anything new to show up on the shelves all the way up there." though from the way she spoke he assumed she must have felt he would not know them even if he had been in London all of his life. Still, he thought it would make her feel better.
He kept his eyes on her, "Lovely Lalla, then?" but his dark eyes left her face for a moment to watch the petals falling. "Or is that too many L's? I never know, I have no talent for words or writing them, and everyone seems to have an opinion if you use too many L's. Bonny Lalla, perhaps?" but when he said Bonny a bit of his brogue had slipped though, it always did, he should have avoided the word but only realized it too late.