feet a net, engaged upon some handiwork which two
little girls were watching. Close by him lay a setter, his nose
between his paws. Occasionally the man raised his eyes to scan the
sea.

"There's Joel," he said, "comin' in around the Bar. Not much air
stirrin' now!"

Then he turned to his work again.

"First, you go _so_ fash'," 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
tip-toed 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