Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/254

 "A pretty state of things it would be if we couldn't get hold of anything that was out of our reach!" the old lady retorted, with ready paradox. But she did not seem to want to go on.

"Well, what did you do?"

"Do? What would anybody do? I got a chair and climbed up on the edge of the sink."

"Dear me! And did you strain yourself?"

"No. I had a fall. But I fixed that curtain fust; straighter 'n it had been fer some time."

"And you fell onto the floor, all that distance? I don't wonder you feel lame."

"Well, no"—and here the reluctance became more evident,—"I fell into the sink!"

She looked defiantly at her daughter, as though daring her to laugh. This the daughter had no inclination to do.

"But, Mother, how did you ever get out?" she asked anxiously.

"Oh, I got out easy enough. But I felt kind o' stiff this mornin'," she admitted, after a pause, "and I thought I'd see how you'd all take it if I was to lay abed for once in my life. But mind you don't let on to anybody," she added, more sharply. "I ain't goin' to be the laughin'-stock of the neighborhood in my declinin' years."

The old lady was about again in a day or two, but she was pretty lame after this, and, indeed, she never seemed quite the same again. She would sometimes fall asleep in her chair—a thing which she had never been known to do before—and