She was always delicate from that hour, and for many months she was
very ill. I have heard that the first thing she expressed a wish
to see was the christening robe, and she looked long at it and then
turned her face to the wall. That was what made me as a boy think
of it always as the robe in which he was christened, but I knew
later that we had all been christened in it, from the oldest of the
family to the youngest, between whom stood twenty years. Hundreds
of other children were christened in it also, such robes being then
a rare possession, and the lending of ours among my mother's
glories. It was carried carefully from house to house, as if it
were itself a child; my mother made much of it, smoothed it out,
petted it, smiled to it before putting it into the arms of those to
whom it was being lent; she was in our pew to see it borne
magnificently (something inside it now) down the aisle to the
pulpit-side, when a stir of expectancy went through the church and
we kicked each other's feet beneath the book-board but were
reverent in the face; and however the child might behave, laughing
brazenly or skirling to its mother's shame, and whatever the father
as he held it up might do, look doited probably and bow at the
wrong time, the christening robe of long experience helped them
through. And when it was brought back to her she took it in her
arms as softly as if it might be asleep, and unconsciously pressed
it to her breast: there was never anything in the house that spoke
to her quite so eloquently as that little white robe; it was the
one of her children that always remained a baby.
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