Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/99

 ness which she joyfully corrected by the practice of small and persistent economies, such as she would have censured in him.

Martha's excitability of temperament, due, not to nerves, but to an uncommonly active imagination, was a constant source of wonder to Ben, though as years went by he had learned to treat it lightly.

"Ben," she would exclaim at supper of a Saturday evening, while her eyes grew big with apprehension, and suppressed anxiety vibrated in her voice—"O Ben! Did you remember to order any dinner for to-morrow?" It was plain that the vision of a starving family had suddenly terrified her imagination.

Ben would take a spoonful of quince preserve with the slow relish of an epicure, then look across the table at his anxious helpmeet, with a deepening of the crow's feet which a life of quiet humor had prematurely graven at the corners of his blue eyes, and say, in a tone of inimitable self-complacency: "Yes, Martha, I got a little salt fish and a cent's worth of asparagus."

Then the children would become hilarious over their father's wit, Martha would draw a long sigh of relief, untroubled by his jesting, and, behold, the crisis was passed.

Ben's wife was a great reader of books, especially of history; and the histories of that day being chiefly a succession of royal biographies, her imagination was peopled with kings and queens.