Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/92

 a little sob, gently laying Robbie's head upon the pillow. "You stupid, stupid Anson! You never knew me!"

"Emmeline! What do you mean?"

"Sure an' I'm thinkin' the misthress has got home, Sorr!"

It was the voice of the faithful Katie, whom he was apparently holding in his arms.

"And did you really think?" asked Emmeline, an hour later, when they sat together by the light of the best lamp,—"And did you really think that I could leave you and the children for ten whole days, and not know how you were getting along?"

"No, I couldn't have thought so," said Anson, with conviction. "I couldn't possibly have thought that. I must have known all the time that you were Katie, only I didn't quite take it in."

As Anson looked at his wife's face, where a few of the more obdurate freckles still clung, and into the eyes which looked so natural and so dear, in spite of the hint of red which still lingered in the eyebrows, he thought that he had never been so well content in all his life—no, not even seven years ago, when his wife seemed to him to be a perfectly faultless being. But he only said:

"Go and play me something, Emmeline. I haven't heard the piano for so long."