Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/135

ards the other side of the street). “They have set up a carriage and pair since you left.”

“Oh! have they ?”

“My dear Shadrach, you don’t know how the world moves. However, we'll do the best we can with it. But they are rich, and we are poor still !”

The greater part of a year was desultorily spent. She moved sadly about the house and shop, and the boys were still occupying themselves in and around the harbor.

“ Joanna,” he said, one day, “I see by your movements that it is not enough.”

“It is not enough,” said she. “My boys will have to live by steering the ships that the Lesters own; and I was once above her!”

Jolliffe was net an argumentative man, and he only murmured that he thought he would mske another voyage. He meditated for several days, and coming home from the quay one afternoon said, suddenly :

“I could do it for ee, dear, in one more trip, for certain, if—if-—”

“Do what, Shadrach ?”

“Enable ’ee to count by thousands instead of hundreds.”

“If what ?”

“If I might take the boys.”

She turned pale.

“Don’t say that, Shadrach,” she answered, hastily.

"Why ?"

“I don’t like to hear it. There’s danger at sea. I want them to be something genteel, and no danger to them. I couldn’t let them risk their lives at sea. Oh, I couldn’t ever, ever!”

“Very well, dear, it sha’n’t be done.”

Next day, after a silence, she asked a question: