So he took his responsibility gravely.This was partly due to the christening service, perhaps, which had gone off very charmingly.It had not been without its embarrassments.None of the neighbouring ladies would stand as godmother, for they were secretly dubious as to the children's origin; so he had asked good Mrs.Spaniel to act in that capacity.She, a simple kindly creature, was much flattered, though certainly she can have understood very little of the symbolical rite.Gissing, filling out the form that Mr.Poodle had given him, had put down the names of an entirely imaginary brother and sister-in-law of his, "deceased," whom he asserted as the parents.He had been so busy with preparations that he did not find time, before the ceremony, to study the text of the service; and when he and Mrs.Spaniel stood beneath the font with an armful of ribboned infancy, he was frankly startled by the magnitude of the promises exacted from him.He found that, on behalf of the children, he must "renounce the devil and all his work, the vain pomp and glory of the world;" that he must pledge himself to see that these infants would "crucify the old man and utterly abolish the whole body of sin." It was rather doubtful whether they would do so, he reflected, as he felt them squirming in his arms while Mrs.Spaniel was busy trying to keep their socks on.When the curate exhorted him "to follow the innocency" of these little ones, it was disconcerting to have one of them burst into a piercing yammer, and wriggle so forcibly that it slipped quite out of its little embroidered shift and flannel band.But the actual access to the holy basinwas more seemly, perhaps due to the children imagining they were going to find tadpoles there.When Mr.Poodle held them up they smiled with a vague almost bashful simplicity; and Mrs.Spaniel could not help murmuring "The darlings!" The curate, less experienced with children, had insisted on holding all three at once, and Gissing feared lest one of them might swarm over the surpliced shoulder and fall splash into the font.But though they panted a little with excitement, they did nothing to mar the solemn instant.While Mrs.Spaniel was picking up the small socks with which the floor was strewn, Gissing was deeply moved by the poetry of the ceremony.He felt that something had really been accomplished toward "burying the Old Adam." And if Mrs.Spaniel ever grew disheartened at the wash-tubs, he was careful to remind her of the beautiful phrase about the mystical washing away of sin.
They had been christened Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers, three traditional names in his family.
