"Maria," said her little sister, drawing nearer and speaking solemnly, "do you intend to ask Mr. Richmond to baptize you the next time he has the baptismal service?"
"If I do," said Maria, "you need not trouble yourself about it."
And Matilda thought she had better let the subject and her sister both alone for the present. She had got herself ready, and now taking her Bible she went out. It was but a little way to the corner. There she turned in the opposite direction from the one which would have taken her to church, and crossed the main street. In that direction, farther on, lay the way to Lilac Lane; but at the other corner of the street Matilda found an interruption. Somebody stopped her, whom she knew the next instant to be Norton Laval.
"Why, it is Matilda Englefield!" he said. "You are just the one I want to see."
"Am I?" said Matilda.
"I should think so. Come along; our house lies that way; don't you recollect?"
"Oh, but I am not going that way now," said Matilda.
"Oh yes, but you are! Mamma says contradicting is very rude, but I can't help it sometimes. Can you help it, Matilda?"
"People ought to be contradicted sometimes," Matilda said, with an arch bridling of her head, which, to be sure, the child was quite unconscious of.
"Not I," said Norton. "Come!"