Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/51

 about it. She used to be the evenest of all my children, and now she's either moping about from morning till night, or else she's as high-flying as a long-tail kite. I thought first myself that she'd see the sense of what I said to her, and I didn't believe she'd mind breakin' with him after such a short acquaintance. That's why I made up my mind not to say anything to you about it. I knew just how you'd feel about Frank Enderby's son, and how you'd hate"

"Fudge, Harriet! 'T ain't Frank Enderby I object to. Frank would ha' come out straight enough if he'd had any kind of a wife. It's Frank's wife I never could abide—a weak, shiftless, wishy-washy woman! It always did rile me jest to look at Sally Enderby; and I must say 't would put me out more 'n most anything I can think of to have any of my own kith and kin on more 'n speakin' terms with a child of hers."

"But, Mother, Frank Enderby was a drunkard," Harriet remonstrated.

"I don't care 'f he was. Any man with a spark of sperit would have gone to the dogs with such a wife as that."

Harriet gave a little gasp of consternation.

"Well," she said, when she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak, "I never thought I should live to hear you stand up for a drunkard!"

The old lady gave her a shrewd look, anda gleam of humor came into the bright old eyes—Harriet did take things so seriously.