Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/32

 ful waste of money," if she was going to keep those twelve photographs for herself. She sometimes thought of confessing the whole thing to kind Brother Ben, or of boldly offering a "picture" to Sister Harriet; but, at the very suggestion, her whole family seemed to rise before her in scorn and derision, and she seemed to hear a chorus of brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, joining in her mother's piercing denunciation.

"You're a fool, Betsy! you're a fool!"

She began to have a distaste for the things, and to entertain daring thoughts of putting them all into the kitchen fire. But she knew that would be an abominably weak and wicked proceeding, and she was not sufficiently hardened to do it.

It was really wearing upon her. She did not sleep, as she had been used, from ten o'clock at night till five or six in the morning; she lost her appetite little by little, and her grateful smile came less readily in response to unintelligible remarks addressed to her by afternoon callers. Old Lady Pratt confided to Harriet that she was "afeard Betsy was goin' to break up early; she seemed to be losing her sperit."

Poor Betsy, as though she had ever had any spirit to lose!

So nearly three months wore away, and Aunt Betsy began to fear that she had sacrificed her peace of mind for good and all.

One Sunday afternoon in December, Brother Ben came in with his youngest daughter Hattie, a girl