Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/225

 think!—oh! what won't he think! And how it must have hurt, you poor little martyr. And oh, dear, how I wish I was dead! O Dixie! Dixie! did it hurt very bad?"

All this time the "poor little martyr" was beating the coverlid with his injured tail, and industriously licking his mistress' nose and chin and eyebrows, saying, as plainly as he knew how, that he had forgotten all about his tail, and the best thing she could do would be to forget all about that horrid man too. And then the supper bell rang, and Hattie had to wash away the traces of her tears and go down and face her family, Dixie following close behind. At supper Hattie seemed to be in hilarious spirits, which her family attributed to the half-dozen valentines she had received in the course of the day. She chattered like a magpie, and gave Hazeldean tit for tat in a manner that delighted her father, and caused her mother to wonder whether she would never grow up. But all the while a certain foolish bit of doggerel was ringing in her ears, sending the blood in sudden tingling waves up among the curls in her forehead.

Ugh-h—

Oh! how hideous it all was! How perfectly hideous!