Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/93

 And as the sweet familiar chords answered to the old magic of her touch, he got up and took the crocuses over to the piano, and set them down where she could see them, and she played on and on, nearly all the evening.

That was a very pleasant evening, and it taught them more than all their troubles had done. Things never came to such a very bad pass again. When, occasionally, this or that went wrong in the household, and the old Betty in Anson rebelled, Emmeline would strengthen her own resolution, and Anson's patience too, by crooning softly, as though to herself, a certain old nursery rhyme, beginning: