Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/243



LD LADY PRATT was failing, and being a shrewd old lady, even at the age of ninety-one, she was very well aware of the fact.

"My faculties ain't what they used to be," she would say, with all her old decision in statement. "I ain't what I used to be, nor what my mother was at my age, and I ain't goin' to be flattered into thinkin' I be."

Everybody liked Old Lady Pratt, though many people were a little afraid of her. Her bright, black eyes dimmed as old age crept upon her, but they rarely softened. The deep, clean-cut furrows in her dark face were the marks of alertness, good-sense, and humor, rather than of gentler qualities. A black "front" with a straight, uncompromising muslin "part," hid the grace and dignity of her white hairs. Her speech was always incisive, often piquant, but never tender. She sat so straight in her chair—thanking Heaven that she had a back of her own—that she never gave that impression of feebleness which makes old age so irresistible in its appeal to the kind