looked up as if but a moment had passed of his continual loneliness.

"Yes, ma'am, I'm one that has seen trouble," he said, and began to knit
again.

The visible tribute of his careful housekeeping, and the clean bright
room which had once enshrined his wife, and now enshrined her memory,
was very moving to me; he had no thought for any one else or for any
other place. I began to see her myself in her home,--a delicate-looking,
faded little woman, who leaned upon his rough strength and affectionate
heart, who was always watching for his boat out of this very window, and
who always opened the door and welcomed him when he came home.

"I used to laugh at her, poor dear," said Elijah, as if he read my
thought. "I used to make light of her timid notions. She used to be
fearful when I was out in bad weather or baffled about gittin' ashore.
She used to say the time seemed long to her, but I've found out all
about it now. I used to be dreadful thoughtless when I was a young man
and the fish was bitin' well. I'd stay out late some o' them days, an'
I expect she'd watch an' watch an' lose heart a-waitin'. My heart alive!
what a supper she'd git, an' be right there watchin' from the door, with
somethin' over her head if 'twas cold, waitin' to hear all about it as I
come up the field. Lord, how I think o' all them little things!"

"This was what she called the best room; in this way," he said
presently, laying his knitting on the table, and leading the way across
the front entry and unlocking a door, which he threw open with an air
of pride. The best room seemed to me a much sadder and more empty place
than the kitchen; its conventionalities lacked the simple perfection of
the humbler room and failed on the side of poor ambition; it was only
when one remembered what patient saving, and what high respect for
society in the abstract go to such furnishing that the little parlor was
interesting at all. I could imagine the great day of certain purchases,
the bewildering shops of the next large town, the aspiring anxious
woman, the clumsy sea-tanned man in his best clothes, so eager to be
pleased, but at ease only when they were safe back in the sailboat
again, going down the bay with their precious freight, the hoarded money
all spent and nothing to think of but tiller and sail. I looked at
the unworn carpet, the glass vases on the mantelpiece with their prim
bunches of bleached swamp grass and dusty marsh rosemary, and I could
read