Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/224

 evening. Mr. Ben Pratt's face was red and his whiskers prickly with the frost as Hattie had discovered when she kissed him a moment before. The dutiful father beamed with inward satisfaction, as he rubbed his hands together to get them warm.

"Better than that! Better than that!" he answered. "I met Mr. Swain just as I turned into Main Street, and for once I had my wits about me."

"You didn't give him the letter!" cried Hattie, in breathless suspense.

"That's just what I did do," her father answered, complacently. "I told him it was something my daughter Hattie had asked me to post, and I thought perhaps he could find the owner," and Ben passed on into the warm library without a glance at the miserable little victim of his ill-judged zeal.

Hattie meanwhile had fled up-stairs, with pert little Dixie close at her heels. As she shut the chamber door behind her, Dixie, at the risk of his life, dashed in, giving a squeal of anguish as the door nipped his tail.

"O Dixie, you poor little angel," she cried, seizing the small imp in her arms, "did I squeeze his tail in the door? Oh! how could I?" and she tenderly laid him on the bed, and knelt beside him, incoherent and distracted. "O Dixie! Dixie! That horrid man! And your poor little tail! And he knows who wroteit! And he will