oked
at him wonderingly.

"I--I haven't ever seen a ship or the sea, but I'm trying so hard
to learn, and I love so to hear you talk of the deep blue ocean. It
was what first attracted me to you." Her tone was almost a whimper.

But her meekness only seemed to increase the Cap'n's impatience.

"You haven't seemed to be like your natural self for a week," she
complained, wistfully. "You haven't seemed to relish telling me
stories of the sea and your narrow escapes. You haven't even seemed
to relish vittles and the scenery. Oh, haven't you been weaned from
the sea yet, Aaron?"

Cap'n Sproul continued to regard his left foot with fierce gloom.
He was giving it his undivided attention. It rested on a wooden
"cricket," and was encased in a carpet slipper that contrasted
strikingly with the congress boot that shod his other foot. Red roses
and sprays of sickly green vine formed the pattern of the carpet
slipper. The heart of a red rose on the toe had been cut out, as though
the cankerworm had eaten it; and on a beragged projection that stuck
through and exhaled the pungent odor of liniment, the Cap'n's
lowering gaze was fixed.

"There's always somethin' to be thankful for," said his meek wife,
her eyes following his gaze. "You've only sprained it, and didn't
break it. Does it still ache, dear?"

"It aches like--of course it aches!" roared the Cap'n. "Don't ask
that jeebasted, fool question ag'in. I don't mean to be tetchy,
Louada Murilla," he went on, after a little pause, a bit of mildness
in his tone, "but you've got to make allowance for the way I feel.
The more I set and look at that toe the madder I git at myself. Oh,
I hadn't ought to have kicked that cousin of yourn, that's what I
hadn't!"

"You don't know how glad I am to hear you say that, Aaron," she cried,
with fervor. "I was afraid you hadn't repented."

"I ought to 'a' hit him with a club and saved my toe, that's what
I mean," he snorted, with grim viciousness.

She sighed, and he resumed his dismal survey of the liniment-soaked
rags.

"Once when I was--" he resumed, in a low growl, after a time.

"Oh, I'm so glad you're goin' to tell a story, Cap'n," she chirped,
welcoming his first return of good-nature since his mishap.

"There ain't no story to it," he snapped. "I only want to say that
there's a place down in Africa where I put in with the _Jefferson
P. Benn_ one time, where they daub honey on folks that they want to
git red of, and anchor 'e