a splendid silk ball-dress, with a long, sweeping
train, and teinty rose-buds in her yellow curls. The blue eyes were
natural as life, and her face was just lovely. Then she brought out a
Saratoga trunk about as big as a foot-stool, which was crowded full of
dolls' dresses, just such as a live young lady would be proud to wear.

"Isn't it beautiful?" says E. E.

"I should think so," says I; "how much did it cost?"

"A hundred and twenty-five dollars," says she. "I sent to Paris for it."

"A hundred and twenty-five dollars?" says I, lifting up both hands;
"that would keep a poor family how long?"

"I don't know," says she, short as pie-crust, "but a poor family
wouldn't amuse my Cecilia, and these will."

"Just so," says I; "what is this for?"

"Oh, that is her father's present--pink coral--hang it across one of the
limbs," says she.

I hung the beads among the spruce leaves, and enjoyed the sight; they
seemed like a string of rose-buds twisted in with the green.

"There now, we will finish in the morning," says E. E. "I wish Cecilia
had invited her little friends; it will seem rather lonesome."

With this, Cousin E. E. gave a little sigh, and we went off to bed,
telling me that I must be sure to get up in time for early service,
which she wouldn't miss for anything.

XVII.

EARLY SERVICE.

Dear sisters:--Before daylight on Christmas morning, I went to early
service at the highest church in New York city, which, after all, isn't
anything to brag of in the way of steeple.

There is a brick meeting-house on Murray Hill that beats it all to
nothing, for that has just the longest and pointedest steeple that I
ever set eyes on. Still, everybody allows that the little Episcopal
church I went to, Christmas morning, is the very highest in all America;
and, though in my heart I don't believe it, having eyes in my
head--there is no chance for me to take a measurement, and what can I
say against the word of everybody else? Still, to you in confidence, for
I don't want to get into a schismatic controversy, I dare take an oath
that the brick church on Murray Hill is twice as high, to say nothing of
the sharp-pointedness of the steeple and the hilly ground.

Cousin E. E. Dempster says she is high church from the crown of her head
to the sole of her foot, which I didn't dispute, for she always had high
notions. She gave me strict charge, when I went to bed, Christmas Eve
night, not to sleep late, and be sure