Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/49

 enough career for Frank Enderby's son. He must needs be "educated" for an architect, and fritter away years of his life in Europe, living the while on charity. An architect, indeed! Nothing but a new fangled name for builder. Had not her own father built half the houses in Dunbridge? Good enough houses for anybody to live in. The stately roof over her own head was a lasting monument to Anson Pratt's skill and ability. Anson Pratt's education had consisted in several years of hard work and privation, as a 'prentice boy. And here was this young upstart requiring all Europe to his teacher! It was just the sort of thing that Harriet had no patience with, and she resolved then and there that this would-be builder of Catholic cathedrals should have no countenance from her family.

But Harriet Spencer was reckoning without "little Lucy," as she might have known at first sight of Lucy's preoccupied face at dinner, and "little Lucy," up to this time, was practically an unknown factor even to her mother.

One of Old Lady Pratt's many wise sayings was, "There's nothin' more likely to come to pass than what you ain't lookin' for." Holding which view, she should have been proof against surprise.

Now it surely would have been difficult to imagine anything more in accordance with this philosophy than Lucy's sudden elevation to inconvenient prominence in the family councils. And