Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/122

 eyes and read their adoration. Poor Edna! Perhaps after all he had cheated her out of what most women want. And from that time forth there was an added touch of kindness and solicitousness in his dealings with her, which filled Edna with satisfaction, as showing that she had kept her husband's affection longer than many women do.

There were three children, Mary, the eldest, being now fourteen. Their father was fond of them all in his undemonstrative way, though he loved them with an unconscious mental reservation. Once there was a discussion in his hearing on the subject of the English law of primogeniture. He took no part in the talk himself, but his mind reverted to the two-year-old boy he had lost so long ago, and it seemed to him that there was, after all, something peculiarly strong in theclaims of one's first-born. His children, in their turn, found hima sufficiently kind and indulgent father, though they were not on terms of intimacy with him. At Christmas-time he took pains to find out their secret wishes. If the little girls sometimes incurred their mother's displeasure by tearing or soiling their clothes he was ready to intercede for them. If Willie, the baby, bumped his head and roared with pain and temper, it was his father who patiently sopped the bruise with cold water and told him not to cry. Yet William Pratt was not one of those fathers whose children cling about their legs and stand on the rounds of