Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/121

 ties. But if Edna, who never concealed what she would have called her feelings, thought he could make her happy, he would not let his preferences stand in the way of her trying the experiment. Having married her, he was an excellent husband. Anything within reason that she wanted she might have. He was doing a good business in cotton, going to his office in the city every day, after the manner of suburbans—and in the course of time he built a very fine house, entirely in accordance with his wife's somewhat high-flying notions. Had Edna been exacting in the matter of sentiment he might not have found it so easy to content her, but as time went on it gradually dawned upon his plain, masculine intelligence, that perhaps, after all, Edna's infatuation had not been purely a tribute to his personal attractions. Such a discovery is not altogether pleasant to a man, even when the opposite state of things might be embarrassing. But William Pratt took it philosophically. He subjected his own physiognomy, mental and physical, to an impartial scrutiny, and he arrived at the conclusion that he had been a fool for his pains. That somewhat heavy countenance, with thick, bristling eyebrows and firm-set mouth, was not calculated to attract any woman, least of all an Edna Brown; that caustic tongue that had estranged so many friends was hardly adapted to wooing. He must have changed a good deal, he reflected drearily, since last he looked into Isabel's