"Imagine it!" said Clarissa.
"Well, you said just now—I don't know what you said!—but you said at any rate that if it had been done in a proper way, you would think more of me; and I say, that it is better not to make vows till you are ready to keep them. I am not ready to give up dancing; and I would have expensive hats and dresses, and feathers, and watches, and chains, and everything pretty that money can buy, if I had the money; and I like them; and I want them."
"I have not given up dancing," said Clarissa.
"Nor other things either," retorted Maria; "but they are pomps and vanities. That is what I say. You promised you would have nothing to do with them."
"Mamma!" said Clarissa, appealingly.
"Yes, my dear," said her mother. "The amount of ignorance in Maria's words discourages me from trying to answer them."
"Ignorance and superstition, mamma."
"And superstition," said Mrs. Candy.
"Matilda thinks just the same way," Clarissa went on, meeting the broad open astonished eyes of the little girl.
"Of course," said Mrs. Candy. "Matilda is too much a child to exercise her own judgment on these matters. She just takes what has been told her."