"For my part," said Caroline, "I have a presentiment that everything will go on well. We will all do notre possible to look our very best; mamma will take care that the rooms and the table shall be arranged in admirable style—and if you and I can only manage to talk and behave just as we ought, there is nothing to fear."
"I hope, indeed, that Colonel Forrester will like us," rejoined Harriet, "and be induced to continue his visits when he again comes to Philadelphia."
"Much depends on the first impression," remarked Miss Clements.
"Now let us just imagine over the arrival of Colonel and Mrs. Forrester," said Harriet.—"The lamps lighted, and the fires burning brightly in both rooms. In the back parlour, the tea-table set out with the French china and the chased plate;—mamma sitting in an arm-chair with her feet on one of the embroidered footstools, dressed in her queen's-gray lutestring, and one of her Brussels lace caps—I suppose the one trimmed with white riband. Aunt Sophia in her myrtle-green levantine, seated at the marble table in the front parlour, holding in her hand an elegant book—for instance, her beautiful copy of the Pleasures of Hope. Caroline and I will wear our new scarlet Canton crapes with the satin trimming, and our coral ornaments."
"No, no," rejoined Caroline; "we resemble each other so much that, if we are dressed alike, Colonel Forrester will find too great a sameness in us. Do you wear your scarlet crape, and I will put on my white muslin with the six narrow flounces headed with insertion.[75] I have reserved it clean on purpose; and I think Aunt Sophia had best wear her last new coat dress, with the lace trimming. It is so becoming to her with a pink silk handkerchief tied under the collar."
"Well," said Harriet, "I will be seated at the table also, not reading, but working a pair of cambric cuffs; my mother-of-pearl work-box before me."
"And I," resumed Caroline, "will be found at the piano, turning over the leaves of a new music-book. Every one looks their best on a music-stool; it shows the figure to advantage, and the dress falls in such graceful folds."
"My hair shall be à la Grecque," said Harriet.
"And mine in the Vandyke style," said Caroline.
"But," asked Sophia, "are the strangers on entering the room to find us all sitting up in form, and arranged for effect, like actresses waiting for the bell to ring and the curtain to rise? How can you pretend that you were not the least aware of their approach till they were actually in the room, when you know very well that you will be impatiently listening to the sound of every carriage till you hear theirs stop at the door. Never, certainly, will a visiter come less unexpectedly than Colonel Forrester."