"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