"You will be late, Maria," was all the answer her little sister made.
And they were late. Matilda was ready and waiting, before Maria's slow preparations were made. They walked quick; but service had begun in the church before they got there. They paused in the vestibule till a prayer should be ended. And here Matilda was seized upon.
"I thought you were not coming," said an earnest whisper. "What made you come so late?" It was Norton Laval.
"I couldn't help it," said Matilda.
"And when you came, I all but missed you. They said all of you—you know—would be in white dresses; and I was looking out for white. Aren't you going to be baptized, after all?"
"Oh yes, Norton."
"Well, here's some flowers for you," said the boy, putting a bunch of white heath and lilies into Matilda's hand. "Mamma is here; up in the Dawsons' pew; it was sold with the place, so we've got it. Come there, Matilda, it will be a good place for you; yours is farther back, you know. Mamma told me to bring you."
Maria had gone in, after an impatient whisper to her sister. And Matilda yielded to a secret inclination, and followed Norton.
The service of baptism was not entered into until the close of the evening. During one of the intervals of the usual service, which preceded the other, Matilda questioned with herself if she really would have done better to put on a white dress? Everybody seemed to expect it. She could not, from the Daweon pew, which was a corner front one, see how her companions were dressed. But she presently recollected that the "fine linen," which Mr. Richmond had talked to them about, "is the righteousness of saints;" and she quieted herself with the assurance that the real attire of fitness is inward and not outward. And when the candidates for baptism were called to come forward, she quietly left her bunch of lilies with her hat on the cushion of the pew.
"Is that Matilda!" whispered Clarissa to her mother.