“What Sunday is it? The first of the month! Oh, I do believe it’s the Sunday when there’s a Children’s Service in the afternoon, and Mummy said once that she thought it would be nice for us to go. Suppose we ask her to let us?”
“If it leaves off raining,” said Leila. “I don’t think we’d be allowed to go again if it pours. But it’s looking brighter.”
“Oh, do let’s try to manage it,” said Chrissie, clasping her hands. “I’d rather—well, rather do anything, or have the horridest pain, rather than tell Aunt Margaret that I’ve lost her book.”
“Yes,” said Leila, piling on the agony, “for, of course, you couldn’t call it an accident, as you’d no business to take it.”
“And if you’d been,”—began Chrissie, but she did not finish the sentence, for at that moment the gong sounded for the early dinner—on Sundays now everybody’s dinner—and the children had to hurry downstairs. On reflection, too, Chrissie said to herself that it would be “awfully silly” to quarrel with Leila.
“She’s been kind about it, and I could never manage without her,” she thought; and as they were entering the dining-room she whispered to her sister, “You ask; I really daren’t.”
It was new for Christabel to own to “not daring” about anything in the world, and Leila felt rather gratified at being trusted in the matter. Nothing was said till dinner was nearly over; the children were very quiet and behaved to perfection. Mrs Fortescue felt pleased. This state of things, following on Chrissie’s attentive looks in church, made her begin to hope that her anxieties about her little daughters were likely to grow less, and inclined her to consent to Leila’s unexpected request.
“Mummy,” she said, “Chrissie and I would like to go to the Children’s Service at church this afternoon. It’s the Sunday for it, and we know the way there quite well, of course. Mayn’t we go?”
Mrs Fortescue smiled.
“I should very much like you to go,” she said, “and I think I can quite trust you by yourselves. But how about the weather?”