Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/75

 "I'll do it," he said to himself; "I swear I'll do it."

"It'll cost a good deal," he continued, as he put on his coat and hung up his saw on its own special peg, "but I can make it up somehow."

He went up stairs into the kitchen, where he hung up his lantern, and washed his hands at the sink. Then, as he passed on into the front of the house, he heard Emmeline's voice, singing a lullaby in the nursery. He paused and listened. Emmeline's singing always appealed to him. To-night her voice was wonderfully sweet, and he liked the words:

Emmeline made her own tunes when she sang to the children. The melody was low and crooning, and in the middle of it Anson could hear little Robbie's voice, saying sleepily: "Kiss me again, Mamma."

Anson leaned against the balustrade.

Was father a nobleman, to care so much about sordid things? Was not Emmeline, after all, a kind of queen, not made for common cares?

She had left out the rest of the verse now, and was merely murmuring that one line. For the hundredth time Anson Pratt's heart softened, and