After I had put on all the pretty clothes I had prepared for her before she was born—the christening robe and the pelisse and the knitted bonnet with its pink ribbons and the light woollen veil—I lifted her up to the glass to look at herself, being such a child myself and so wildly, foolishly happy.
"That old Rector won't see anything equal to her this summer morning anyway," I thought.
And then the journey to church!
I have heard that unmarried mothers, going out for the first time after their confinement, feel ashamed and confused, as if every passer-by must know their shameful secret. I was a kind of unmarried mother myself, God help me, but I had no such feeling. Indeed I felt proud and gay, and when I sailed out with my baby in my arms I thought all the people in our street were looking at me, and I am sure I wanted to say "Good morning" to everybody I met on my way.
The church was not in a joyous quarter. It stood on the edge of a poor and very populous district, with a flaunting public-house immediately opposite. When I got to it I found a number of other mothers (all working women), with their babies and the godfathers and godmothers they had provided for them, waiting at the door.
At this sight I felt very stupid, for I had been thinking so much about other things (some of them vain enough perhaps) that I had forgotten the necessity for sponsors; and I do not know what I should have done at that last moment if the sacristan had not come to my relief—finding me two old people who, for a fee of a shilling each, were willing to stand godmother and godfather to my darling.
Then the priest came out of the church in his white surplice and stole, and we all gathered in the porch for the preliminary part of the sacrament.
What an experience it was! Never since my marriage had I been in a state of such spiritual exaltation.
The sacristan, showing me some preference, had put me in the middle of the row, immediately in front of the priest, so what happened to the other children I do not know, having eyes and ears for nothing but the baptism of my own baby.
There were some mistakes, but they did not trouble me, although one was a little important.