"Very well," said Clarissa, "I have a right to wear comfortable shoes, if I can get them."
"Then you have a right to pomps and vanities," returned Maria; "but I say you haven't a right, after you have declared and sworn you would have nothing to do with them."
"Mamma," said Clarissa, but with heightened colour, "Is this a child?"
"After the Shadywalk pattern," Mrs. Candy answered.
"Girls in Shadywalk have a little sense, when they get to be as old as sixteen," Maria went on. "Where you have been, perhaps they do not grow up so fast."
"People would put weights on their heads if they did," said Clarissa.
"It doesn't matter," said Maria. "You can imagine that I am as old as you are; and I say that it is more respectable not to make promises and vows than to make them and not keep them."
"Do not answer her, my dear," said Mrs. Candy.
"And that is the reason why I have not been baptized, or whatever you call it——"
"I never said so, Maria," said her aunt. "The two things are not the same."