Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/97

 carte blanche for refurnishing, had been dazzled by the most resplendent visions of red velvet sofas and a red velvet carpet bestrewn with baskets of pink and white roses, similar to, but even surpassing in brilliancy, the possessions of his wealthy brother-in-law James Spencer. His cheerful resignation when this glittering bubble of his fancy was pricked by the delicate point of his wife's finer perception, only showed what a thoroughly good Christian Ben was, and the amiability with which he submitted to the olive browns was eventually not without its reward. For many years after, the wheel of fashion having taken another turn, he had the satisfaction of seeing his neighbors revolutionize their houses at great expense, for the sake of bringing about the very condition of subdued harmony which had so long reigned under his own roof. Then it was that Mrs. Ben, who had meanwhile become an old woman, reaped a belated harvest of praise, and rejoiced in the consciousness of having proved herself to have been thirty years in advance of her time.

But this is a digression.

At the date in question, though the olive browns had not yet found their justification, Mrs. Ben, or Martha, as she was more familiarly called, had won a reputation as a very safe authority in matters of taste.

She was now the mother of five children, ranging in age from eighteen-year-old Ben down to