Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/11



UNT BETSY lived with her mother, Old Lady Pratt, in a small house in Green Street. Small as the house was, she had never got over the impression that it was rather large, and very handsome. Forty-five years ago, before she lost her hearing, Aunt Betsy, then little Betty Pratt, had heard her mother pronounce it to be "in every respect superior" to the house they had left, though that had been "a very desirable residence in its day." It stood on a quiet little side street, where there were no pretentious neighbors to put it out of countenance; a street which slumbered on, so undisturbed by the bustle of the town a few blocks away that Aunt Betsy used sometimes to wonder whether it were not "a little hard o' hearin' too."

The "new house," as she still called it in her own thoughts, was long and rambling, presenting