At that moment the tea-bell rang, and they hurried downstairs. Lulu linked her arm within Celia's, and thus they entered the dining-room together, much to the astonishment of Joy, who failed to understand how they could have got on such friendly terms in so short a time.
"Lulu has the loveliest dress you can possibly imagine to wear to church to-morrow," Celia confided to her sister, when they were going to bed that night.
"Has she?" said Joy, indifferently.
"Joy, don't you wish you and I had handsomer dresses to wear on Sundays?" Celia inquired, rather aggrievedly.
"No," was the response, somewhat bluntly spoken. "I don't want to be like Lulu Tillotson. We go to church to worship God, and it doesn't matter to Him about our clothes, so why should it matter to us?"
[CHAPTER VII.]
A SUNDAY AT THE MOAT HOUSE.
THE Moat House was situated about half-a-mile from Crumleigh, a little village which consisted of one straggling street and one old church surrounded by a small bury-ground. The inhabitants of Crumleigh were nearly all of the labouring class, the heads of the families being employed on the neighbouring farms, so that the worshippers who assembled at the church on Sundays were, with a very few exceptions, working people who earned their livelihoods on the land.
Sir Jasper Amery never went to church nowadays. Since his son's death he had shrunk from appearing in public, and generally spent Sunday mornings shut up alone in the library, whither he, as a rule, repaired as soon as he had breakfasted. On this particular Sunday, though, which Mr. Tillotson and his daughter were spending at the Moat House, Sir Jasper inquired into the intentions of his guests, and desired to know who was going to church.
"Are you?" he asked Mr. Tillotson, after learning that his niece meant to take the little girls.