ome
says it is. This is a great event for the boy, ain't it?"

"I can't face the thought o' losin' on him, father." The woman came
forward a step or two and sat down on the doorstep. She was a
hard-worked, anxious creature, whose face had lost all look of youth.
She was apt, in the general course of things, to hurry the old man and
to spare little time for talking, and he was pleased by this
acknowledged unity of their interests. He moved aside a little to give
her more room, and glanced at her with a smile, as if to beg her to
speak freely. They were both undemonstrative, taciturn New Englanders;
their hearts were warm with pent-up feeling, that summer morning, yet
it was easier to understand one another through silence than through
speech.

"No, I couldn't git much sleep," repeated the daughter at last. "Some
things I thought of that ain't come to mind before for years,--things
I don't relish the feelin' of, all over again."

"'T was just such a mornin' as this, pore little 'Lisha's father went
off on that last v'y'ge o' his," answered the old sailor, with instant
comprehension. "Yes, you've had it master hard, pore gal, ain't you? I
advised him against goin' off on that old vessel with a crew that
wa'n't capable."

"Such a mornin' as this, when I come out at sun-up, I always seem to
see her top-s'ils over there beyond the p'int, where she was to
anchor. Well, I thank Heaven 'Lisha was averse to goin' to sea,"
declared the mother.

"There's dangers ashore, Lucy Ann," said the grandfather, solemnly;
but there was no answer, and they sat there in silence until the old
man grew drowsy again.

"Yisterday was the first time it fell onto my heart that 'Lisha was
goin' off," the mother began again, after a time had passed. "P'r'aps
folks was right about our needing of him. I've been workin' every way
I could to further him and git him a real good chance up to Boston,
and now that we've got to part with him I don't see how to put up with
it."

"All nateral," insisted the old man. "My mother wept the night through
before I was goin' to sail on my first v'y'ge; she was kind of
satisfied, though, when I come home next summer, grown a full man,
with my savin's in my pocket, an' I had a master pretty little figured
shawl I'd bought for her to Bristol."

"I don't want no shawls. Partin' is partin' to me," said the woman.

"'T ain't everybody can stand in her fore-door an' see the chimbleys
o' three child'n's houses wit