Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/48

 Just what I should have expected of him! I shouldn't be at all surprised if he had turned Romanist. Like as not he was hand in glove with all the play-actors in Europe."

This highly colored view of the young man's probable career was due partly to her profound disapproval of all his antecedents, and partly to his "theatrical" appearance. None of the Dunbridge young men wore velvet jackets and broad-brimmed hats, nor did they stand bareheaded while they talked to a little chit like Lucy. Much as ever if they showed Old Lady Pratt herself such deference. To say nothing of his hair, cropped as close as a jail-bird's! A horrible suspicion crossed Harriet's mind. Could he have been in jail?

It was easy to believe anything, however bad, of a son of Frank Enderby. Had not the father drunk himself into the grave, lingering by the way, however, to drink up a decent fortune? Had not his wife been an inefficient, slatternly woman, without backbone enough to keep her children out of rags? What could one expect of the son of such people? The other children had all died. It was more than likely that the inherited vices of the whole family had centred in this boy. And what was he, after all, but a charity boy, supported, ever since his parents' death, by a rich stranger? A self-respecting young fellow would have gone into a store, and worked his way up. But that was not a fine