the water in his life till I took him out for a sail a week come
Tuesday. A fine use they'd be to him but to drown himself. A puff of
wind, and not knowing how to take in a reef, the boat would be over in a
jiffy and the nets lost. Now who would be the better for the loss of my
nets? answer me that. And I'd like to be told when my boats and nets
were at the bottom of the lake to whom would the Son of Man turn for a
corner in which to lay his head, or for a bite or a sup of wine. John
and James would give their boats to Judas belike, and he'd bring home
about as much fish as would---- But I'm thinking of your father. What
will he be saying to all this, and his business dwindling all the while,
and we beggars?--the words with which my wife roused me this morning. Of
course, says she, if the stone that never was cut out of the mountain
with hands is going to be slung and send the Romans toppling, I've
naught to say against sharing, but the Kingdom had better come quickly,
Simon Peter, if thou'lt fish no more; and the woman is right, say I,
though I hold with every word that falls from the Master's lips, only
this way it is, he looks to my fishing for his support, and Miriam is
quick to remind me of that. A good woman, one that has been always
yielding to my will and never had a word against our lodger, but sets
the best before him out of thankfulness for his saving of her mother's
life, though one more mouth in a house is always a drain, if the Master
is as easily fed as a sparrow. But restive she is now about the delay:
as I was saying just now she wakes me up with a loud question in my ear:
now, Simon Peter, answer me, art thou going into Syria to bid the blind
to see, the lame to walk, and the palsied to shake no more, or art thou
going to thy trade? for in this house there be four little children,
myself, their mother, and thy mother-in-law. I say nothing against the
journey if it bring thee good money, or if it bring the Kingdom, but if
it bring naught but miracles there'll be little enough in the house to
eat by the time ye come back. And, says she, the feeding of his children