"And look so—so distinguished."
I drew my figure upright, and looked into the glass opposite. My cousin had chosen her words well; there was something imposing in the bend of that head. I say nothing; but she was right. Indeed, so far as I am concerned, she generally is.
Early in the morning I sent down for my pink silk dress. Cousin E. E. looked as if she was going to say something against it, at first; but, after a little, her face cleared up, and I heard her muttering:
"This is the third time. Nothing on earth but a woman of genius could stand that; but she has got enough to carry it off."
I said nothing, but thought of that bill, and just made a calculation of how much it would cost a woman to rig herself out if she went to many parties, and only wore a dress that cost five hundred dollars once.
Well, sisters, Christmas Day came, and we were up by daylight, for Cousin Emily Elizabeth is, as I have told you, a High Church woman and an Episcopalian. We haven't got any meeting-house of that denomination in our neighborhood, and I don't exactly know what high and low church means, without it is that one set hold to meeting-houses with a belfry, and the others stand up for a high steeple—a thing that I told Cousin E. E. we common people didn't aspire to; at which she laughed again, as if I had said something awfully witty.
Well, in another report I have given you an account of this daybreak meeting in the High Church, but just now I am taken up with the Christmas dinner.
Now don't calculate, because we eat dinner punctually at noon in Vermont, that people here do the same thing, because it is nothing of the sort. Poor working people do that in this city, and nobody else. The more genteel and the richer you are, the later you eat your meals. Most of the well-to-do merchants eat dinner at six. Men that have got above earning their own living dine later yet, and some have got so disgustingly genteel and rich, that I don't suppose they dine till next day.
Cousin Dempster attends to business yet, so he settled down on eight o'clock for his dinner, and a splendid affair it was.
When Cousin E. E. and I came rustling downstairs with a cataract of silk rolling after us, I just screamed right out. The sight of that table was so exhilarating, glass a-shining—silver dishes and things a-sparkling—flowers heaped up in flower-pots and twisted in wreaths around the glass globe overhead, which flashed, and sparkled, and glittered as if it had been frozen up with ten thousand icicles that flung back all the light without melting a drop. The silk curtains were all let down. The carpet looked like a flower-bed, and the whole room was a sight to behold.