Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/245

 A wonderfully bright, youthful look came into the aged face. "Nothing could make me tired if your grandfather was alive again. But there! What do you know about that?"

"I wish I could remember Grandpa Pratt," said the little girl, sympathetically. "Tell me about him."

"There isn't much to tell. Only he was the best man that ever lived, I do believe. You've seen his picter?"

"Oh, yes, Grandma; and it looks so much like Sir Walter Scott's."

"He was a great reader of Scott, and had a very high opinion of his works. But I always said it was just as honorable a calling to be a builder of houses, like your great-grandfather, as to be putting up castles in the air that never kept the rain off anybody's head."

There was a silence, during which the isinglass gave an occasional crackle, and once the whole body of the stove seemed to stretch itself and sigh profoundly.

"Susie," said grandma, after a while, "I hope you ain't goin' to be like your old-maid sisters. There's Bella, twenty-five years old last 'lection, with no more idea of marryin' than she had ten years ago. Mark my words, child, a woman should be early married. Your grandfather was courtin' me when I was your age, and at seventeen I was a happy bride."

"But, Grandma," said Susie, deprecatingly,