"

"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."

"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."

"Have you given up dancing too, Tilly?" Clarissa went on.

"I have never thought about it, Cousin Clarissa."

"Matilda all over!" exclaimed the young lady. "She has not thought
about it, mamma. When she thinks about it, she will know what h