Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/325

 rather wondered that he did not wish to die. His chief diversion in the lonely days of convalescence was the contemplation of the old chromo which hung on his chamber wall. He thought he had learned its lesson pretty well. He had resisted the temptation to speculate with the small sum saved from the wreck of his fortunes, though it scarcely yielded him his board and lodging. In those days of slowly returning health, he took a grim pleasure in looking at the desperate fisherman on the bank. That wretched gambler was clearly losing his foothold on the very ground beneath him, and was slipping down into the stream. He, at least, Robert Pratt, had kept his head above water.

One morning his reflections took another turn. What good sport it used to be to go fishing! How many years it was since he had had any sport at all! And with a rush of memory the old days of his youth came back to him, when he used to go "down East" for a summer holiday. The more he thought about it the more his thoughts clung to the old memories, the more ardently he longed for the old delights.

Ten days from that time Uncle Bobby came, a travel-stained pilgrim, to Pleasant Point—travel-stained from the long and weary journey of life.

Human things had changed a good deal at Pleasant Point. The few straggling fishermen's huts had given place to a collection of tidy green and white cottages, a flourishing boarding-house