irs, Matilda, I will try and mind
mine. And I will be much obliged to you."

"Then you will not help me?"

"Help in what?"

"There is a poor woman, Maria," said her little sister, lowering her
voice, "a poor old woman, who has no one to take care of her, and
hardly anything to live upon. She lives--you can't think how she
lives!--in the most miserable little house, dirty and all; and without
fire or anybody to sweep her room, or make her bed, or make a cup of
tea for her. If you would help me, we might do something to make her
comfortable."

"Where is she?"

"In Lilac Lane."

"Have you been to see her?"

"Yes."

"What do you think Aunt Candy would say if she knew it?"

"Will you help me, Maria?"

"Help make her bed and sweep her room?"

"Yes, and get her a cup of tea sometimes, and a clean supper."

"A clean supper!" exclaimed Maria. "Well! Yes, I guess I'll help you,
when I have nothing of my own to do. When the dinner gets itself, and
the house stays swept and dusted, and Aunt Candy lives without cakes
for breakfast."

Matilda was silent.

"But I'll tell you what, Matilda," said her sister, "Aunt Candy will
never let you do this sort of work. You may as well give it up
peaceably, and not worry yourself nor anybody else. She'll never let
you go into Lilac Lane--not to speak of getting dirty people's dinners.
You may as well quit it."

"Don't tell her, Maria."

"You'll tell her yourself, first thing," said Maria, scornfully.

Matilda had to go up-stairs soon to her reading in her aunt's room. It
was even more unintelligible, the reading, this time than before;
because Matilda's head was running so busily on something else.

"You do not read well, child," said her aunt.

"No, ma'am. I do not understand it."

"But it is about what you have just done, Matilda. It is about the
ordinance of baptism, and the life proper to a person who has been
received into the Church. You ought to understand that."

"I _do_ understand it, in the Bible."

"What does the Bible say about it?"

"It says,--'My sheep hear My voice: and I know them, and they follow
Me.'"

"What do you mean by 'following Him'?"

"Why, living the sort of life He lived, and doing what He tells us to
do."

"How do you propose to live the sort of life He lived? It's almost
blasphemy."

"Why, no, aunt Candy; He tells us to do it."

"Do what?"

"Live the sort of life He lived. He says we must follow Him."

"Well, how, for insta