Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/219

 urday evening, as a reward, Hattie declared, for having "tried all the week to be good." It was his habit to remain exactly one hour, which time was passed in conversation with Mattie and the elder members of the family. Hattie, who had no mind to allow herself to be shut out in the cold, and who usually sat by with Dixie, the fox-terrier, in her lap, used occasionally to throw in a light-minded observation, thus giving an unexpected turn to the conversation, and causing Mr. Emerson Swain to gaze benignantly at her through his spectacles. "It is such fun to make him blink at me," the bad child would say, when remonstrated with by her family.

Mr. Swain's conversation was quite worth listening to in a very different spirit from that which Hattie deigned to honor it with. Mrs. Ben maintained that he had "the best informed mind" she had ever met with, and she confided to her mother-in-law, Old Lady Pratt, that she almost hoped that Mattie might fancy him.

"It's high time she fancied somebody!" the old lady had declared, true as always to her faith in early marriages. Mattie, for her part, listened most politely and attentively to all the schoolmaster had to say, responding in a ladylike manner, which seemed to give him entire satisfaction, if one might judge by the regularity of his visits. She did not acknowledge, even to her family, that she found such elevated conversation a trifle tedious.