Eli | Page 3

he said to the children, as he drew a thread; "then you go so fash'."
And as he worked he made a great show of labor, much to their diversion.
But the sight of Joel's broad white sail had not brought pleasant thoughts to his mind; for Joel had hailed him, off the Shoal, the afternoon before, and had obligingly offered to buy his fish right there, and so let him go directly home, omitting to mention that sudden jump of price due to an empty market.
"Wonder what poor man he 's took a dollar out of to-day! Well, I s'pose it's all right: those that 's got money, want money."
"What be you, Eli--ganging on hooks?" said Aunt Patience, as she tiptoed into the kitchen behind him, from his wife's sick-room, and softly closed the door after her.
"No," said the elder of the children; "he 's mending our stockings, and showing me how."
"Well, you do have a hard time, don't you?" said Aunt Patience, looking down over his shoulder; "to slave and tug and scrape to get a house over your head, and then to have to turn square 'round, and stay to home with a sick woman, and eat all into it with mortgages!"
"Oh, well," he said, "we 'll fetch, somehow."
Aunt Patience went to the glass, and holding a black pin in her mouth, carefully tied the strings of her sun-bonnet.
"Anyway," she says, "you take it good-natured. Though if there is one thing that's harder than another, it is to be good-natured all the time, without being aggravating. I have known men that was so awfully good-natured that they was harder to live with than if they was cross!"
And without specifying further, she opened her plaid parasol and stepped out at the porch.
Though, on this quiet afternoon of Saturday, the peace of the approaching Sabbath seemed already brooding over the little dwelling, peace had not lent her hand to the building of the home. Every foot of land, every shingle, every nail, had been wrung from the reluctant sea. Every voyage had contributed something. It was a great day when Eli was able to buy the land. Then, between two voyages, he dug a cellar and laid a foundation; then he saved enough to build the main part of the cottage and to finish the front room, lending his own hand to the work. Then he used to get letters at every port, telling of progress,--how Lizzie, his wife, had adorned the front room with a bright ninepenny paper, of which a little piece was enclosed,--which he kept as a sort of charm about him and exhibited to his friends; how she and her little brother had lathed the entry and the kitchen, and how they had set out blackberry vines from the woods. Then another letter told of a surprise awaiting him on his return; and, in due time, coming home as third mate from Hong-Kong to a seaman's tumultuous welcome, he had found that a great, good-natured mason, with whose sick child his wife had watched night after night, had appeared one day with lime and hair and sand, and in white raiment, and had plastered the entry and the kitchen, and finished a room upstairs.
And so, for years, at home and on the sea, at New York and at Valparaiso and in the Straits of Malacca, the little house and the little family within it had grown into the fibre of Eli's heart. Nothing had given him more delight than to meet, in the strange streets of Calcutta or before the Mosque of Omar, some practical Yankee from Stonington or Machias, and, whittling to discuss with him, among the turbans of the Orient, the comparative value of shaved and of sawed shingles, or the economy of "Swedes-iron" nails, and to go over with him the estimates and plans which he had worked out in his head under all the constellations of the skies.
The supper things were cleared away. The children had said good-night and gone to bed, and Eli had been sitting for an hour by his wife's bedside. He had had to tax his patience and ingenuity heavily during the long months that she had lain there to entertain her for a little while in the evening, after his hard, wet day's work. He had been talking now of the coming week, when he was to serve upon the jury in the adjoining county-town.
"I cal'late I can come home about every night," he said, "and it 'll be quite a change, at any rate."
"But you don't seem so cheerful about it as I counted you would be," said his wife. "Are you afraid you'll have to be on the bank case?"
"Not much!" he answered. "No trouble 'n that case! Jury won't leave their seats. These city fellers