when you sneeze I think it's the crack o' doom."

"I'm sorry about them potatoes," repeated Cap'n Ira. "I make you a
lot of extry work, Prue. Sometimes I feel, fixed as I be in health,
I oughter be in the Sailors' Snug Harbor over to Paulmouth. I do,
for a fact."

"And what would become of me?" cried the old woman, appalled.

"Well," returned Cap'n Ira, "you couldn't be no worse off than you
be. We'd miss each other a heap, I know."

"Ira!" cried his wife. "Ira, I'd just _die_ without you now that
I've got you to myself at last. Those long years you were away so
much, and us not being blessed with children--"

Ira Ball made a sudden clucking sound with his tongue. That was a
sore topic of conversation, and he always tried to dodge it.

"It did seem sometimes," pursued Prudence, wiping her eyes with a
bit of a handkerchief that she took from her bosom, "as though I
wasn't an honestly married woman. I know that sounds awful"--and she
shook her head--"but it was so, you only getting home as you did
between voyages. But I was always looking forward to the time when
you would be home for good."

"Don't you s'pose I looked forward to casting anchor?" he demanded
warmly. "Seemed like the time never would come. I was always trying
to speculate a little so as to make something besides my skipper's
pay and share. That--that's why I got bit in that Sea-Gold