“I thought I’d warn ye not to twit.  My rheumaticks is a good deal better at this writin’, and my mind ain’t so much occupied by other matters as it has been for a week or so.  When you come home don’t talk northin’ but business, jest as you natch’ally would to a brother-in-law and an equal pardner.  That advice don’t cost northin’, but it’s vallyble.”

As Cap’n Sproul trudged home, his little wife’s arm tucked snugly in the hook of his own, he observed, soulfully: 

“Mattermony, Louada Murilla—­mattermony, it is a blessed state that it does the heart good to see folks git into as ought to git into it.  As the poet says—­um-m-m, well, it’s in that book on the settin’-room what-not.  I’ll read it to ye when we git home.”

V

Cap’n Aaron Sproul was posted that bright afternoon on the end of his piazza.  He sat bolt upright and twiddled his gnarled thumbs nervously.  His wife came out and sat down beside him.

“Where you left off, Cap’n,” she prompted meekly, “was when the black, whirling cloud was coming and you sent the men up-stairs—­”

“Aloft!” snapped Cap’n Sproul.

“I mean aloft—­and they were unfastening the sails off the ropes, and—­”

“Don’t talk of snuggin’ a ship like you was takin’ in a wash,” roared the ship-master, in sudden and ungallant passion.  It was the first impatient word she had received from him in that initial, cozy year of their marriage.  Her mild brown eyes swam in tears as she looked 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!”