Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/132

She looked again at the great house through the screen of bottled pickles.

“Rub on—yes,” she said, bitterly. “But see how well off Emily Lester is, who used to be so poor! Her boys will go toe college, no doubt; and think of yours—obliged to go to the parish school.”

Shadrach’s thoughts had flown to Emily.

“Nobody,” he said, good-hamoredly, “ever did Emily a better turn than you did, Joanna, when you warned her off me and put an end to that little simpering nonsense between us, so as to leave it in her power to say 'Aye’ to Lester when he came along.”

This almost maddened her.

“Don’t speak of by-gones !” she implored, in stern sadness. “But think, for the boys’ and my sake, if not fer your own, what are we to do to get richer ?”

“Well,” he said, becoming serious, “ to tell the truth, Ihave always felt myself unfit for this business, though I’ve never liked to say so. [seem to want more room for sprawling ; a more open space to strike out in than here among friends and neighbors. I could get rich as well as any man, if I tried my own way.”

“I wish you would! What is your way ?”

“To go to sea again.”

She had been the very one to keep him at home, hating the semi-widowed existence of sailors’ wives. But her ambition checked her instincts now, and she said:

“Do you think success really lies that way ?”

“I am sure it lies in no other.”

“Do you want to go, Shadeach ?”

“Not for the pleasure of it, I can tell ’ee. There’s no such pleasure at sea, Joanna, aa I can find in my back parlor here. To speak honest, I have no love for the brine, I never had much. But if it comes to a question of a fortune for you and the lads, it is an-