Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/50

 yet so inconsistent is even the wisest philosopher that when Harriet, a few weeks later, unfolded to her mother this new and growing perplexity, Old Lady Pratt so far forgot herself as to lay down her knitting, take off her steel-bowed spectacles, and exclaim: "Well, I never! That beats me, I declare for 't!"

They were in Old Lady Pratt's sunny sitting-room, with the pretty green three-ply carpet on the floor, and the canary bird singing lustily above the plants in the window. Deaf Aunt Betsy was sitting by, nodding her head over her worsted-work, but she was no interruption to confidences. If she marked the agitation which caused her mother to take off her spectacles, she gave no sign. Betsy rarely knew the preliminary intricacies of the family affairs. She was thought to have had her share of the excitement if she received sufficient warning to enable her to get a sofa cushion worked in time for the wedding. So, when she observed her mother's withered fingers tightly holding the bows of the shining spectacles—careful even in her excitement that the glasses should not get blurred—Betsy merely took a critical survey of her worsteds, and choosing a rich green, proceeded to fill in one of her "heart patterns" with it, rejoicing in the fine contrast it offered to its brilliant crimson neighbor.

"And you feel sure, Harriet, that it ain't jest a passing fancy?"

"I'm afraid it's more 'n that, Mother. Lucy hasn't been the same girl since I took her to task