"I am glad you do, my dear," said Miss Pring, significantly. "It's a pity you missed that sermon, though."
The afternoon, which was fine, the three girls spent in the rock garden, but in the evening it rained again—such an incessant downpour that the half mile walk to Crumleigh Church was quite out of the question. Mrs. Wallis sat down at the piano in the drawing-room after tea, and commenced the accompaniment of a hymn which she sang with the children. The sounds of music brought Sir Jasper and Mr. Tillotson from the dining-room to listen, and Lulu forgot her dress and her affectations, as she joined her voice with Celia and Joy's, and afterwards declared she had never before in her life spent such a happy Sunday evening.
"I think I shall try to learn to play some hymn tunes," she confided to Celia, later on; "it's so dull at home on Sunday evenings if we don't go to church; and sometimes in the winter I get such bad colds that I'm obliged to stay at home. How beautifully your mother plays! You can't think how I envy you and your sister."
"Oh, why?" Celia cried, intensely surprised, for she considered she had more cause to envy Lulu, the rich man's daughter, than Lulu had cause to envy her. "I thought you had everything you could wish for. Doesn't your father give you all you want?"
"Oh, yes, of course he does!"
"Then, why should you envy Joy and me?"
"Because you have a mother to love you—mine died when I was baby, you know. I like your mother very much, but I'm afraid she doesn't altogether approve of me!"
"What makes you think that?" Celia asked uneasily, for she knew it was so.
"The way I have caught her looking at me several times to-day—half sorry, half vexed." There was a slight pause, after which Lulu proceeded in a lighter tone: "I've really enjoyed this Sunday, and I do hope Sir Jasper will invite me here again. I wonder if your mother would let you come and stay with me at T—? Our house is in the main street, but there's plenty of room in it, and it's very comfortable. Would you like to come?"
"Oh, indeed I should!" Celia replied, delighted at the idea.