Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/260

 "Oh, dear! I wish I could do something for her," she whispered, as she crept down the narrow stairs to the sitting-room.

Eliza was making a cheerful clatter in the kitchen, and some English sparrows were squabbling in the snow; but for Betsy's ears there was nothing to break the sense of utter emptiness and desolation.

"Oh, dear!" she kept saying to herself—"oh, dear!"

She moved toward the parlor, where her mother had lain in state. As she opened the door a fierce chill struck her, and she went and got her little gray knit shawl, which she pulled tightly about her shoulders. Everything in the parlor was in its accustomed place, yet nothing was the same. She moved to the table in the middle of the room, and laid her hand upon its hard, cold surface. In the shadow beneath a window she saw a small object lying. She picked it up. It was a little bunch of pansies which one of the great-grandchildren had brought "to Grandma Pratt."

"Oh, dear!" murmured Betsy. "It's the pansies. They've been forgotten. And they was always her favorite flower."

She lifted them to her face a moment, and then she laid them down on the table. By and by she went to the kitchen and fetched a tumbler of water, and set the pansies in it.

After that she wandered aimlessly about again.