Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/215



VERYBODY liked Mattie and Hattie Pratt, and it would have been strange if such had not been the case. Even the fact of their universal popularity failed to create cavillers. The boys and girls of Dunbridge would as soon have thought of questioning the merits of the sunshine and the west wind, as the claims of Mattie and Hattie to their loyal goodwill. Indeed the simile is not inapt. The darkeyed Mattie, four years the elder, had in her disposition much of the staying, heart-warming quality of sunshine, while there was a refreshing breeziness about her sister which was ever welcome and ever new.

It had been something of a trial to Mrs. Ben Pratt, who was not without a sense of euphony, that the exigencies of family relationship should have obliged her to name her two daughters Martha and Harriet. The inevitableness of the descent to "Mattie" and "Hattie" could not be denied, and the hopeless lack of distinction in the reiteration of that flat a was very depressing