"I'd like to see God, mammy dear! why can't I?"
"We can none of us see God—yet," said her mother, gently; "we shall see Him some day if we are good. Now listen, sweetheart, you must be perfectly quiet in church, and not talk at all; you must do whatever I do. Remember, it is God's House, and we go there to thank Him for all He gives us, and to pray to Him for help to do right."
Lady Valeria's face was very solemn, and she held it up to be kissed, and she made many protestations with regard to the extreme decorum of her conduct when Sunday should come. Then the head nurse appeared and carried her off to nursery tea.
Her parents had misgivings as to the sobriety of her behaviour in church. The Countess felt nervous and said so; as for the Earl, he laughed and loved her, but he said that nothing would induce him to accompany his daughter to church next Sunday afternoon. Hers was a character of much originality. She acted with decision, and always unexpectedly; and the little Countess, who was only nineteen years older than her daughter, often felt that the baby girl was the stronger of the two.
There was a pleasant flutter of expectation among the Sunday-school children, and, indeed, among the congregation generally, at the children's service on that memorable Sunday when Lady Valeria first came to church. Since her own christening, and that of her small brother, nothing so exciting had occurred. The Earl's seat was high up in the centre aisle, in full view of the congregation. As the young Countess walked in, leading her little daughter by the hand, she had to run the gauntlet of the kindly inquisitive eyes of the entire congregation, an unusually large one. She blushed very much, for she was a shy little lady, who loved to go her gracious way quietly and unobserved. Not so Lady Valeria—from her earliest infancy she had been taught to give pleasure by her pretty smiles, and that to "notice people" was one of the most binding of her obligations. Though certainly no Pharisee, she dearly loved "greetings in the market-place," and as she trotted up the aisle she nodded gaily to her acquaintances, who were there in large numbers. She waved her fat hand to the curate as he took his seat in the choir, much to his confusion.
In the choir were two of the lodge-keeper's sons. Their white garments had for the nonce concealed their identity; but presently Lady Valeria recognised them, and, mounting a high hassock, she nodded and waved ecstatically—she felt so sure they would be delighted to see her in church. She wondered why they looked so red, and why they did not pull their front locks and grin, as they were wont to do when she passed them in the pony carriage. She felt chilled and disappointed at this lack of responsiveness on the part of so many of her friends.
The service began. Lady Valeria carefully copied her mother and made no sound. That lady, who had not noticed "the nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles" which marked her daughter's entrance, felt her cheeks begin to cool and was conscious of a hope upspringing that her temerity in bringing Lady Valeria to church was to be triumphantly vindicated.
Suddenly, however, in the middle of the psalms, which were read in alternate verses by vicar and congregation, she noticed that, in the congregation's verse, somebody was saying in a triumphant sing-song:
"There was a lady loved a swine.
'Honey!' said she,
'Pighog, wilt thou be mine?'
'Hunc!' said he."
The final "hunc" was a life-like imitation of one of the Earl's prize pigs. The verse in question happened to be shorter than Lady Valeria's, and she finished after the congregation.