Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/255

 she was always mortified and vexed when she awoke.

One afternoon she started up suddenly from a nap, saying, "Betsy, what did you say?"

"What is it, Mother," said Betsy, turning her head to listen.

"What did you say?" asked the old lady.

"Nothin', Mother, nothin'."

The strained voice became a little querulous. "Betsy, I ask you what was you a-talkin' about?

"Nothin', Mother, nothin' at all."

Then a flash of anger, her last fit of "temper," lit up the old eyes, and she cried, "What was you a-thinkin '  of?"

"Nothin', Mother, nothin'," declared the bewildered Betsy.

"Betsy, I heard ye!" screamed the baffled old lady; and she sank back exhausted, only to fall asleep again in a few minutes.

Yes, Old Lady Pratt was breaking up. She did not "take to her bed," as the saying is. She died one morning before "sun-up."

For a few days before her death she kept her own room, sitting, still upright, in the stuffed chair, in her sunny south window. It was January, and the snow lay glittering on the ground.

"I like it; it's so bright and cheerful," she declared, when they asked her if it was not too dazzling.

Betsy did not leave her side for several days and nights, till at last Harriet insisted upon