Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/56

 At last, when bedtime came, Lucy said to her mother, "I wish you would let me go to Aunt Jane's for a visit."

Her eyes were fixed upon the carpet. Her mother thought they looked swollen and red.

"Why do you want to go to Aunt Jane's?"

"I should like to get away from home."

"Why?"

She lifted her eyes to her mother's. Mother and daughter were very much alike at that moment.

"Why?" Harriet repeated.

"It isn't easy to do as you wish me to at home, and"

"And what?"

"I should like to think it over quietly."

There was no defiance in the tone. It seemed to Harriet as though she were listening to her own voice. A peculiar sense of identity with the girl came over her, and she did not resent the speech. If Lucy really did resemble her in character there was nothing to fear. Harriet, with all her determination, would never have rebelled against lawful authority.

"Go to bed now, child," she said, not unkindly; "I will think about it."

When she left Lucy at her Aunt Jane's the next day, with no more enlivening companionship than that of her dull old bachelor cousin, Anson Bennett, Harriet felt some misgivings.

"I don't know 's it's just the place for her,"