Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/267

 good of a backbone, I should like to know, if not so's we can stand up straight and make the most of the chances the Lord gives us!"

This had been the old lady's stand from the very first, and she held her position stoutly to the last. The "unselfish" Mary Anne had always given her greater cause for uneasiness than did Mary Anne's scapegrace brother Tom, who, in his boyhood, was the despair of his other elders.

One day, in her extreme old age, Old Lady Pratt gave still stronger expression to her views than she had hitherto done. For on this occasion she took her daughter Harriet (Mary Anne's grandmother) into her confidence on a point which she had never before touched upon.

"I tell you what't is, Harriet," she said, with her old eyes snapping, and her knitting-needles glinting faster than ever. "I tell you what 't is! I ain't lived ninety years in this world without findin' out that a little spunk is as good for other folks as 't is for yourself. It's my opinion that women like Mary Anne do more mischief than they'd relish bein' called to account for. There's Betsy, now! You don't 'spose I'm any the better for havin' ordered her about for more 'n sixty years runnin'?"

The old lady looked at her patient daughter with a softened, pitiful expression.

"Poor Betsy! She ain't to blame, seein' she's deaf as a post. She's a good girl, and she'd ben smart's anybody if she could only ha' heard a