Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/15

 room. And, above all, she found companionship in her flowers. Every one gave her slips and seedlings, and marvelled at her success in raising them. The sunny south window in the wood-shed was the nursery for these pets of hers, and not until they were fairly flowering were they promoted to the green wire stand in the sitting-room. The neighbors used to praise her skill and ask her advice, and even her mother would sometimes betray a pride in this "faculty" of Betsy's.

"Betsy," she would say, when Mrs. Baxter had come in with her knitting to pass the afternoon—"Betsy, you go out into the wood-shed and fetch in that little flower that blowed this mornin'. Mis' Baxter would like to see it, mebbe."

She did not succeed so well with the children growing up about her. She was a little shy of them, of their gay chatter, which she could not understand, and their childish egotism. They all loved Grandma, or, as she had now become, Great-grandmamma Pratt. She made such good jokes, and laughed, and was interested in all their doings. But Aunt Betsy just sat there with her worsted-work, and didn't hear when she was spoken to unless you quite shouted in her ear, and then she jumped in such a funny way, and seemed so flustered. Why, she couldn't even "make a cheese" for them, when the big hoops came into fashion, by twirling round and round