Bressant

One afternoon in the cool heart of October, Cornelia and Sophie found

themselves on the hill which rose up in front of the house, above the

road, bound on a hunt for autumn leaves. They were alone. Bressant's

time for coming was still an hour distant. A few nights before there had

been a frost, which had inspired a rainbow soul into the woods; and the

glory of the golden and crimson leaves made it imperatively necessary

that they should be gathered and allowed to illuminate the dusky

interior of the Parsonage.

Since Cornelia's return home, the sisters had not been so much together

as formerly. Sophie had observed it, and secretly blamed herself: she

allowed Bressant to monopolize her--left Cornelia out in the cold--was

selfish and thoughtless just because she was happy--and so forth: taking

herself severely to task, and resolving to amend her behavior forthwith.

But there seemed to be some difficulty in the way of consummating her

best intentions.

Cornelia was no longer so easily to be come at; she did not volunteer

herself now in the liberal, joyous way she used to do; did not, in fact,

appear half so ready to do her share in the work of reconstruction. It

began to force itself upon Sophie that the edifice of their former

relations was not lightly to be rebuilt; and the growth of this

conviction occasioned her to mar her ordinarily serene and justly

harmonized existence with sundry little fits of crying and other

mournful indulgences.

As for Cornelia, if she noticed the estrangement at all, she did not

allow it to occasion her any anxiety. Jealousy and discontent are more

self-absorbing passions than love, and they closed her eyes to whatever

they did not involve. Yet the effect of the estrangement was more

hurtful upon her than upon Sophie; for never had her pure-minded

sister's influence been so needful to her as now, when the very nature

of the malady forbade its being so relieved.

But this afternoon it had so happened that they found themselves

together, on the hill. Each had filled a basket with the most brilliant,

or harmonious, or vividly contrasted colors they could find. They had

emerged from the wood into the clear autumn sunshine which rested upon

the hill-side, and sat down upon a gray knee of rock, encased with crisp

gray and black lichens. Below lay the Parsonage, with its

weather-blackened, shingled roof, and the garden, full of shrubbery,

intersected by winding paths, the fountain in the centre. The stony road

wound around the spur of the hill, and was visible here and there, in

its slopes and turnings on the way to the village, light buff between

the many-colored bordering of foliage. The winding valley looked like

Nature's color-box; the tall hills beyond, sleeping beneath their

Persian shawls, contrasted richly with the cool pearl-gray of the lower

sky behind them. Away to the right, though seemingly nearer than from

the road below, rose the white steeple of the meeting-house, and,

peeping out around it, the roofs and gable-ends of the village houses.