Susie was waiting. I followed him,
because I knew he would feel better if I just put my hand on his arm for
a moment and assured him that I was feeling perfectly well.

The girl pointed out at sea.

"It's a-comin' on dreadful foggy," she said, gloomily.

Daddy and I looked at one another, and we stared at the dark pall that
was sweeping in, raw and chilly. Of course we at once knew its
significance. It must surely detain the _Snowbird_ on its return journey.

Just then an old fisherman came up, touching his cap.

"Beggin' yer pardon, sor," he said. "Is yer after findin' th' doctor
gettin' any better?"

"I can hardly tell you," answered Daddy, impatiently. "I know very little
about such things, but he looks very badly to me."

"Oh! The pity of it!" exclaimed the man. "I tells yer, sor, it's a sad
day, a real sad day fer Sweetapple Cove."

"Damn Sweetapple Cove!" Daddy shouted right in the poor fellow's face
with such energy that he leaped back in alarm.

But Susie had taken hold of Daddy's arm.

"Now you come erlong o' me, sor," she said, soothingly, as if she had
spoken to a child. "Don't yer be gettin' excited. Yer needs a good cup o'
tea real bad, I'm a-thinkin', and a smoke. Yer ain't had a seegar to-day,
and men folks is apt to get awful grumpy when they doesn't get ter smoke.
Come erlong now, there's a good man."

Strange to say, Daddy went with her, willingly enough, after I had kissed
him. He didn't resent Susie's manner at all. As I watched he stopped
after going a few yards, and looked out at sea, beyond the entrance of
the cove. Everything was disappearing in a dull greyness that was
beginning to blot out the rocky cliffs, and he turned to the girl.

"My boat will never get back to-night," he said, "and I suppose that
to-morrow will be worse. It always is. I wonder whether there is another
such beastly country in the world?"

"I've heerd tell," remarked Susie, sagaciously, "as how they is some
places as has been fixed so them as lives in 'em will sure know what a
good place Heaven is when they gits to it."

CHAPTER XIX

_Dr. Frank Johnson to Mrs. Charlotte Johnson_

_Dearest Mother_:

I had expected to sail away from St. John's on the twentieth to return to
you before resuming the hard search for something to keep together the
body and soul which struggling young doctors without means have so hard a
time to maintain in their proper relation. Since the old _Chandernagore_
limped in