She had little faculty for
detail, relying on her sister to supplement this deficiency. She was
more of a conformist than was Sophie in regard to toilet matters;
and--an important virtue not invariable with young ladies--she always
could tell when she had on any thing becoming.
One December day, when a broad, pearl-gray sky was powdering the
motionless air with misty snow, the sisters sat together at their sewing
in what had been known, since his accident, as Bressant's room. There
was no stove; but a rustling, tapering fire was living its ardent,
yellow, wavering life upon the brick hearth, and four or five logs of
birch and elm were reddening and crackling into embers beneath its
intangible intensity. It made a grateful contrast to the soft, cold bank
of snow that lay, light and round, upon the outside sill and the
slighter ridges that sloped and clung along the narrow foothold of the
window-pane frames. Presently Cornelia got up from the low stool on
which she had been sitting, and, having slipped on the waist of her new
dress, invited Sophie's criticism with a courtesy.
"Dear me, Neelie!" exclaimed she, in gentle consternation, "are you
going to wear your corsage so low as that?"
"Yes, why not?" returned Cornelia, with a kind of defiance in her tone;
"it's the fashion, you know.
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