In following out her psychological progress, we have necessarily outstripped, to some extent, the sober pace of the narrative.  It was about the first of December that rumors began to be circulated in the village of an approaching ball at Abbie’s.  It was to be the grandest—­the most complete in all its appointments—­of any that ever had been given there.  It was looked upon, in advance, as the great event of the year.  Real, formal invitations were to be sent out, printed on a fold of note-paper, with the blank left for the name, and “R.S.V.P.”—­whatever that might mean—­in the lower left-hand corner.  There were to be six pieces in the band; dancing was to be from eight to four, instead of from seven to twelve, as heretofore; and the toilets, it was further whispered, were to be exceptionally brilliant and elaborate.  Certain it was that dress-making might have been seen in progress through the windows of any farm-house within ten miles; and at the Parsonage no less than elsewhere.

Sophie had an exquisite taste in costume, though her ideas, if allowed full liberty, were apt to produce something too fanciful and eccentric to be fashionably legitimate.  But, let a dress once be made up, and happy she whose fortune it was to stand before Sophie and be touched off.  Some slight readjustment or addition she would make which no one else could have thought of, but which would transform merely good or pretty into unique and charming.  Sophie had the masterly simplicity of genius, but was generally more successful with others than with herself.

As for Cornelia, she knew how she ought to look; but how to effect what she desired was sometimes beyond her ability.  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.  Oh, I’ve seen them lower than that in New York!”