Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/101

 royalty, should be so ready to make a toy of it at the first opportunity, struck him as being quite as absurd as though his eighteen-year-old Ben were deliberately to go back to nursery rhymes and tin soldiers.

But though Ben did not share his wife's feelings he was as ready to gratify them as though they had been his own.

One pleasant afternoon in October, Mrs. Ben, adorned with a black silk apron and wearing a deep Shaker sun-bonnet, was out in the garden gathering a basketful of late nasturtiums, with which to put a touch of autumn sunshine into her olive-brown parlor. She had the faculty of disposing a bit of color just in the place where it was needed, and Ben had begun to perceive that these judicious touches gave their rooms a gayer, cheerier air, than all the downright crimson and gold seemed able to impart to the highly colored apartments which had once been his envy.

As she stooped to trace with careful fingers the windings of one of the-delicate, brittle stems, she heard a step upon the gravel walk, and glancing up, beheld her husband coming toward her. His appearance soearly in the day would have alarmed her had she not perceived a twinkle of roguish mystery in his eyes, which he was vainly trying to repress.

"Why, Ben!" she exclaimed, rising hastily to her feet and hurrying toward him. "What has brought you home so early?"