part of Ruth, and
answers more suggestive than explanatory from Mr Benson; while Miss
Benson kept up a kind of running commentary, always simple and often
quaint, but with that intuition into the very heart of all things
truly religious which is often the gift of those who seem, at first
sight, to be only affectionate and sensible. When Mr Benson had
explained his own views of what a christening ought to be considered,
and, by calling out Ruth's latent feelings into pious earnestness,
brought her into a right frame of mind, he felt that he had done what
he could to make the ceremony more than a mere form, and to invest
it, quiet, humble, and obscure as it must necessarily be in outward
shape--mournful and anxious as much of its antecedents had rendered
it--with the severe grandeur of an act done in faith and truth.

It was not far to carry the little one, for, as I said, the chapel
almost adjoined the minister's house. The whole procession was
to have consisted of Mr and Miss Benson, Ruth carrying her baby,
and Sally, who felt herself, as a Church-of-England woman, to be
condescending and kind in requesting leave to attend a baptism among
"them Dissenters;" but unless she had asked permission, she would
not have been desired to attend, so careful was the habit of her
master and mistress that she should be allowed that freedom which
they claimed for themselves. But they were glad she wished to go;
they liked the feeling that all were of one household, and that
the interests of one were the interests of all. It produced a
consequence, however, which they did not anticipate. Sally was full
of the event which her presence was to sanction, and, as it were,
to redeem from the character of being utterly schismatic; she spoke
about it with an air of patronage to three or four, and among them to
some of the servants at Mr Bradshaw's.

Miss Benson was rather surprised to receive a call from Jemima
Bradshaw, on the very morning of the day on which little Leonard was
to be baptized; Miss Bradshaw was rosy and breathless with eagerness.
Although the second in the family, she had been at school when her
younger sisters had been christened, and she was now come, in the
full warmth of a girl's fancy, to ask if she might be present at the
afternoon's service. She had been struck with Mrs Denbigh's grace
and beauty at the very first sight, when she had accompanied her
mother to call upon the Bensons on their return from Wales; and had