style="font-size:15px;"> "And so, as I told you, I have decided to give an especial reception," said Madam Carroll, returning to a subject begun in the dining-room. "I shall have it on Monday; from five to eight."
"I am sorry you took the trouble, mamma. It is pleasure enough for me simply to be at home again."
"My receptions are seldom for pleasure, I think," said Madam Carroll, thoughtfully. "In this case it seemed proper to announce the fact that you had returned to us; that Miss Carroll would be henceforth a member of her father's household at the Farms."
"Happy girl!" interpolated Sara. She was leaning back in the door-way, her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes looking into the soft darkness of the garden.
"This was, in my opinion, a not unimportant event," continued Madam Carroll. "And it will be so estimated in Far Edgerley. There are, you know, in every society certain little distinctions and – and differences, which should be properly marked; the home-coming of Miss Carroll is one of them. You have, without doubt, an appropriate dress?"
"All my gowns are black, of course. There is one I call best; but even that is severely plain."
"On the whole, you will look well in it," answered Madam Carroll, after a moment's consideration of the figure in the door-way; "and it will have the added advantage of being a contrast. We have few contrasts in Far Edgerley, and, I may say, no plainness – no plainness whatever. Rather, a superabundance of trimming. The motive is good: I should be the last to underrate it. But even with the best intentions you cannot always construct new costumes from changes of trimming merely; there comes a time when the finest skill will not take the place of a little fresh material, no matter how plain it may be. The Greers, for instance, have made over their green poplins twice a year now for five years, and have done it well. But, after all, we remain conscious that they are still the same green poplins. Miss Corinna Rendlesham, too, and her sisters, have accomplished wonders with different combinations of narrow black velvet ribbon and fringe on their black silks – so much so, indeed, that the material is now quite riddled with the old lines of needle-holes where trimmings formerly ran. They wear them to church with Stella shawls," pursued the lady, meditatively; "and to receptions, turned in at the neck, with white lace."
"Do the other people here give receptions also?" asked Sara, from the door-step.
"They would never dream of it," replied the elder lady, with serenity.
But was she the elder? No sign of age was visible in all her little person from head to foot. She was very small and slight. Her muslin gown, whose simple gathered waist was belted by a ribbon sash, had a youthful, almost childlike, aspect, yet at the same time a pretty quaintness of its own, like that of an old-fashioned miniature. The effect of this young-old attire was increased by the arrangement of the hair. It was golden hair, even and fine, and it hung in curls all round her head – long curls that fell below the waist. These curls were distinct and complete spirals, each one perfect in itself, not intertwining with the next; a round stick passed through any one of them would not have been visible from bottom to top. "Now that is what I call a curl!" old Senator Ashley was wont to remark. But though this golden hair curled so definitively when it once began to curl, it lay smooth and straight as the hair of a nun over the top of the little head, and came down evenly also over the corners of the forehead, after that demure old fashion which made of every lady's brow a modest triangle, unambitious alike of a too intellectual height or a too pagan lowness.
What was it that this little grande dame, with her curls, her dress, and her attitudes, resembled? Some persons upon seeing her would have been haunted by a half-forgotten memory, and would at last (if clever) have recalled the pictures in the old "Annuals" and "Keepsakes" of fair ladies of the days of the Hon. Mrs. Norton and L. E. L. The little mistress of Carroll Farms needed but a scarf and harp, or a gold chain round her curls, with an ornament reposing classically in the centre of her forehead, to have taken her place among them. But upon a closer inspection one difference would have made itself apparent, namely, that whereas the lovely ladies of the "Annuals" were depicted with shoulders copiously bare (though much cloth had been expended in sleeves), the muslin gown of little Madam Carroll came up to her chin, the narrow ruffles at the top being kept in place by a child's old-fashioned necklace of coral, which fitted closely over them.
Madam Carroll's eyes were blue, large, and in expression tranquil; her features were small and delicate, the slender little lips like rose leaves, the upper one rather long, coming straight down over childlike teeth of pearl. No; certainly there was no sign of age. Yet it might have been noticed, also, by an acute observer, how little space, where such signs would have been likely to appear, was left uncovered: the tell-tale temples and outside corners of the eyes, the throat, with its faint, betraying hue, the subtly traitorous back of the neck, the texture of the wrists and palms, all these were concealed by the veil of curls and the close ruffles of the dress, the latter falling over the hands almost to the knuckles. There was really nothing of the actual woman to be seen save a narrow, curl-shaded portion of forehead and cheek, two eyes, a little nose and mouth, and the small fingers; that was all.
But a presence is more than an absence. Absent as were all signs of age in Madam Carroll, as present were all signs of youth in the daughter who had just arrived. Sara Carroll was barely twenty. She was tall and slender; she carried herself well – well, but with a little air of pride. This air came from the poise of her head: it was as noticeable when one saw her back only as when one saw her face. It seemed a pride personal, not objective, belonging to herself, not to her surroundings; one could imagine her with just the same air on a throne, or walking with a basket on her arm across a prairie. But while it was evident that she was proud, it would have been difficult to have stated correctly the nature of the feeling, since it was equally evident that she cherished none of the simple little beliefs often seen in girls of her age before contact with the world has roughly dispelled them – beliefs that they are especially attractive, beautiful, interesting, winning, and have only to go forth to conquer. But she herself could have stated the nature of it confidently enough: she believed that her tastes, her wishes, her ideas, possessed rather a superior quality of refinement; but far beyond this did her pride base itself upon the fact that she was her father's daughter. She had been proud of this from her birth. Her features were rather irregular, delicate. Ordinarily she had not much color. Her straight, soft thick hair of dark brown was put plainly back from her oval face, and this face was marked by the slender line of eyebrows of the same dusky hue, and lighted by two gray eyes, which were always, in their fair, clear color, a sort of surprise when the long, dark lashes were lifted.
"I wonder that you take the trouble," she said, referring to the proposed reception.
The blue orbs of Madam Carroll dwelt upon her for a moment. "We must fill our position," she answered. "We did not make it; it has been allotted to us. Its duties are therefore our duties."
"But are they real duties, mamma? May they not be fictitious ones? If we should drop them for a while – as an experiment?"
"If we should drop them," answered Madam Carroll – "if we should drop them, Far Edgerley, socially speaking, would disappear. It would become a miscellaneous hamlet upon a mountain-top, like any other. It would dissolve into its component parts, which are, as you know, but ciphers; we, of the Farms, hold them together, and give them whatever importance they possess."
"In other words, we, of the Farms, are the large figure. One, which, placed before these poor ciphers, immediately turns them into wealth," said Sara, laughing. "Precisely. The receptions are part of it. In addition, the Major likes them."
Sara's eyes left the soft darkness of the garden, and rested upon the speaker. "If my father likes them, that is enough. But I thought he did not; he used to speak of them, when we met at Baltimore, as so wearisome."
"Wearisome, perhaps; but still duties. And of late – that is, since you last saw him a year and
