Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/88

 always taken pride in finding the first crocuses as a surprise for him.

He stepped up and looked at them, and at the same time the boys came running in, looking clean and whole as they usually did nowadays. He took little Aleck on his knee, and then he said, as Katie finished her task:

"Did you put those flowers there, Katie?"

"Yes, Sorr."

She stood, with her apron in her mouth, looking shy and awkward. "I was thinkin', Sorr, as how it seemed so lonesome-like after the childers was put to bed, and I thought as how the shmall flowers might be company for ye'z."

"Thank you, Katie, they are very pretty," said Anson.

"They's my mamma's flowers," little Robbie declared, looking doubtfully at the smiling Katie. Katie had a grotesque smile. Her lips went down and in at the corners in a manner that was not prepossessing. She fixed her eyes, with an inconsequent expression on the key-board of the piano, and said: "Beggin' your pardon, Sorr, and does the mistress like the flowers?"

"Yes, Katie. Your mistress likes flowers," Anson replied, with a queer feeling in his throat.

"My mamma's more beautifuller than those flowers," Robbie asserted stoutly.

Meanwhile little Aleck, who had been rifling his father's pockets, had pulled out a small folded piece of paper. It was before the day of envel-