Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/102

 "Is it early?" he asked, innocently, making as though he would attack the citadel of the Shaker bonnet.

"Oh! oh! You'll muss my hair!" she cried, retreating.

"All done up for the afternoon?"

"Of course it is," was the reproachful answer. "But, Ben, what has brought you home so early?"

"Old Pacer," he replied, this time with a still more quizzical look.

Ben was not the man to be hurried into an agreeable disclosure. He loved too well the pleasures of anticipation.

"Has anything happened?" she asked, with growing impatience.

"Yes. I've got home."

Ben was sometimes very trying.

"Come, Martha," he called, as she started, in simulated dudgeon, to walk away to her nasturtium beds, "let's go and get some grapes."

"Good—ain't they?" he observed, as they sat in the long arbor, eating the delicious Catawbas that grew in beautiful clusters just within their reach.

A pleasant silence fell upon them, broken only by the clucking of hens in a neighbor's yard, while the mellow October sunshine filtered through the thinning vines and checkered the backs of the two figures sitting amicably together. Martha had taken off her Shaker bonnet, and the sunshine slanted across the glossy black hair, which was brushed smoothly down over the ears,