Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/220

 "Why do you stay in the room when Mr. Swain calls?" she would ask Hattie. "You might just as well be amusing yourself in the library."

"Oh, but he amuses me," Hattie would cry. "He's just nuts! He arranges his sentences so beautifully, and his spectacles look so owlish. Do you know, Mattie, he seems a great deal too old and solemn to fall in love."

"Very likely he is," assented Mattie, for the two girls had agreed between themselves that he must be "well over thirty." "There isn't any question of his falling in love, as far as I know."

Now Hattie Pratt, though not of a literary turn of mind, had a certain knack with her pen, which had stood her in good stead in more than one of the small crises of her lively existence. One day in February she might have been seen curled up in the cushioned window-seat of the parlor, in close consultation with the lyric muse. It was a Sunday afternoon, and she had some misgivings as to the godliness of her undertaking. But, unfortunately for her Sabbath-day morals, an incident had occurred on the previous evening which had filled her with thoughts of vengeance, whose execution would no longer be deferred.

Mr. Swain had been speaking of one of the assistant teachers at the high-school, the teacher who had the misfortune to stutter as often as he became at all agitated, and Hattie, who was a nat-