Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/231

 hand upon it, he said: "Hattie! Which is it? Tell me once for all. Do you love me, or do you despise me?"

Then Hattie lifted up her head and looked him full in the face, and said: "Mr. Swain, I can't bear you!"

He opened the gate for her without another word, and, as she and Dixie passed through, he lifted his dripping hat and said good-bye.

Her mother met her at the door, anxious over her long absence, and Hattie threw herself, wet waterproof and all, upon her mother's neck, and cried: "O Mother! Mother! He says he loves me! That dreadful man!"

"My child, what do you mean?" cried Mrs. Ben, thinking that Hattie had taken leave of her senses. "Come up to your own room and get off these soaking things."

They went up-stairs, followed by the faithful Dixie.

"He says he loves me, Mother," she lamented again, as her mother pulled off her waterproof, and commanded her to change her shoes and stockings.

"And your petticoats are wet through!" cried Mrs. Ben. Her motherly heart was in much greater terror of colds than of lovers, which latter dispensation was in the natural order of things, and could not be averted.

It was not until the child was clothed again that her mother was ready to believe that she