While he spoke, he watched the girl sitting beside Mrs. Kildare, and at the first sign of shrinking, of embarrassment, he would have slipped at once into another theme. But there was no shrinking in that pretty, empty face. Indeed, after the first few moments of shyness before so large an audience, the girl looked about her openly, bridling, pleased with the attention she was attracting in her new dress and with her new baby. If there was menace in those staring faces, the Madam was there to protect her. It was no new thing to the girl to be prayed over; this had come to be an attention she expected from preachers. Young as she was, there had been good reason for her leaving the town from which she came to Storm. But a whole sermon about herself, right out in church! It was a proud moment for Mag.
Benoix, his eyes on her face, sighed even as he spoke, realizing the probable hopelessness of Mrs. Kildare's effort.
The congregation was free to leave at the close of the regular service, without waiting for the christening. But it did not leave. For one thing, there was the Madam to be welcomed to church—excuse enough for those who needed excuse. To their shocked surprise the child was christened by the Madam's own name, "Katherine."
Afterwards, to each of the women who shook her hand, Kate said some such thing as this:
"You know Mag Henderson here, don't you? We've discovered that she is quite a wonderful dressmaker. Yes, she made the dress I have on, and those my girls are wearing. She is a stranger among us, too, so that of course we must find her plenty of work. That is only hospitable."
Kate knew her people when she appealed to their hospitality. Many a village gossip, many a virtuous farmer's wife who had pursed her lips and kept her skirts from degrading contact with the notorious Mag Henderson, found herself pledged to employ the Madam's protégée for her next dressmaking.
"It does beat all," Mrs. Sykes was heard to murmur helplessly, "how that woman gets folks to do whatever she wants 'em to! 'Birds of a feather,' I say. But there! If she's willin' to give that misbegotten child her own Christian name, it won't do for the rest of us to be too toploftical. And them girls," she added, "certainly do dress stylish."
Philip usually took his Sunday dinner at Storm, and the congregation had the further privilege of watching their rector drive away in the same surrey with the Madam and Mag, apparently upon the most intimate and cordial relations with Mag's infant.
Mrs. Kildare, more sensitive of disapproving eyes for her friends than for herself, suggested that he come home with Jemima and Jacqueline instead.
"I'm a little uneasy about the mare Jacqueline is driving," she said, for an excuse.