Fair Harbor | Page 3

Now you go!"
"But look here, Sarah, for Heaven's sake----"
"Be still, Sears, and don't be foolish. There ain't dishes enough to worry about. I'll have 'em done in half a shake. Go outdoors, I tell you. But don't you walk on those legs of yours. You hear me."
Her brother--Sarah Macomber was a Kendrick before she married Joel--smiled slightly. "How do you want me to walk, Sarah, on my hands?" he inquired. "Never mind my legs. They're better this mornin' than they have been since that fat woman and a train of cars fell on 'em.... Ah hum!" with a change of tone, "it's a pity they didn't fall on my neck and make a clean job of it, isn't it?"
"Sears!" reproachfully. "How can you talk so? And especially now, when the doctor says if you take care of yourself, you'll 'most likely be as well as ever in--in a little while."
"A little while! In a year or two was what he said. In ten years was probably what he meant, and you'll notice he put in the 'most likely' even at that. If you were to lash him in the fore-riggin' and keep him there till he told the truth, he'd probably end by sayin' that I would always be a good for nothin' hulk same as I am now."
"Sears, don't--please don't. I hate to hear you speak so bitter. It doesn't sound like you."
"It's the way I feel, Sarah. Haven't I had enough to make me bitter?"
His sister shook her head. "Yes, Sears," she admitted, "I guess likely you have, but I don't know as that is a very good excuse. Some of the rest of us," with a sigh, "haven't found it real smooth sailin' either; but----"
She did not finish the sentence, and there was no need. He understood and turned quickly.
"I'm sorry, Sarah," he said. "I ought to be hove overboard and towed astern. The Almighty knows you've had more to put up with than ever I had and you don't spend your time growlin' about it, either. I declare I'm ashamed of myself, but--but--well, you know how it is with me. I've never been used to bein' a loafer, spongin' on my relations."
"Don't, Sears. You know you ain't spongin', as you call it. You've paid your board ever since you've been here."
"Yes, I have. But how much? Next to half of nothin' a week and you wouldn't have let me pay that if I hadn't put my foot down. Or said I was goin' to try to put it down," he added with a grim smile. "You're a good woman, Sarah, a good woman, with more trials than your share. And what makes me feel worst of all, I do believe, is that I should be pitched in on you--to be the biggest trial of all. Well, that part's about over, anyhow. No matter whether I can walk or not I shan't stay and sponge on you. If I can't do anything else I'll hire a fish shanty and open clams for a livin'."
He smiled again and she smiled in sympathy, but there were tears in her eyes. She was seven years older than her brother, and he had always been her pride. When she was a young woman, helping with the housework in the old home there in Bayport, before her father's death and the sale of that home, she had watched with immense gratification his success in school. When he ran away to sea she had defended him when others condemned. Later, when tales of his "smartness," as sailor or mate, or by and by, a full rated captain, began to drift back, she had gloried in them. He came to see her semi-occasionally when his ship was in port, and his yarns of foreign lands and strange people were, to her, far more wonderful than anything she had ever found in the few books which had come in her way. Each present he brought her she had kept and cherished. And there was never a trace of jealousy in her certain knowledge that he had gone on growing while she had stopped, that he was a strong, capable man of the world--the big world--whereas she was, and would always be, the wife and household drudge of Joel Macomber.
Now, as she looked at him, pale, haggard and leaning on his cane, stooping a little when he had been so erect and sturdy, the pity which she had felt for him ever since they brought him into her sitting-room on the day of the railway accident became keener than ever and with it came an additional flash of insight. She realized more clearly than she had before that it was not his bodily injuries which hurt most and were the hardest to bear; it was his