Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/114

 tative powers were not great. "And Edward? And that handsome gown?"

"Edward will have to go without me. And the gown?" She paused an instant, while a familiar look came into the ardent face. "Why, the gown will make over nicely for one of the girls when they are grown up. You know, Ben, the colors I choose don't go out of fashion. The Hazeldeans all have good taste."

Ben was consoled and relieved. Martha might give up the ball—though he didn't see the sense of it,—but she had not changed her nature yet; she was still a Hazeldean.

That day all the family but the inconsolable Eddie and his mother went to town to Uncle Edward's office, to see the procession escort the Prince to the State-House. They came home with glowing accounts of the fine display. Even Ben, the heretic, had found it surprisingly interesting to be looking straight down out of his own republican eyes at the future King of England, and he owned as much.

"And to think, Martha, that you shouldn't see the Prince after all!" he said at supper.

"Hadn't you betterchange your mind, and go to the ball?" he added, coaxingly; for a moral impossibility is a difficult thing to make other people understand.

Martha was at that moment engaged in the motherly office of drying the fingers of her youngest, who had been surreptitiously dabbling them