se suffer. If
Jarvis goes, Jessie goes, that's flat."

"I think it will be an excellent plan, Mr. Bad Temper, and I've no doubt
that we can manage it."

"Don't say 'we' when you talk of managing it. I tell you I'm entirely on
the defensive until some one robs me, then I'll take what is my
neighbor's if I can get it. If it were not for my promise to Sir Tom, I
wouldn't leave the farm for a minute! And I would establish a quarantine
against all giants for at least five years."

"You know you like Jarvis. He is one of the best."

"That's all right, Polly. He's as fine as silk, but he isn't fine enough
for our Jane yet."

CHAPTER LX

"I TOLD YOU SO"

It may be the limitless horizon, it may be the comradery of confinement,
it may be the old superstition of a plank between one and eternity, or
it may be some occult influence of ship and ocean; but certain it is
that there is no such place in all the world as a deck of a
transatlantic liner for softening young hearts, until they lose all
semblance of shape, and for melting them into each other so that out of
twain there comes but one. I think Polly was pleased to watch this
melting process, as it began to show itself in our young people, from
the safe retreat of her steamer chair and behind the covers of her book.
I couldn't find that she read two chapters from any book during the
whole voyage, or that she was miserable or discontented. She just
watched with a comfortable "I told you so" expression of countenance;
and she never mentioned home lot or garden or roses, from dock to dock.

It is as natural for a woman to make matches as for a robin to build
nests, and I suppose I had as much right to find fault with the one as
with the other. I did not find fault with her, but neither could I
understand her; so I fretted and fumed and smoked, and walked the deck
and bet on everything in sight and out of sight, until the soothing
influence of the sea took hold of me, and then I drifted like the rest
of them.

No, I will not say "like the rest of them," for I could not forgive this
waste of space given over to water. In other crossings I had not noted
the conspicuous waste with any feeling of loss or regret; but other
crossings had been made before I knew the value of land. I could not get
away from the thought that it would add much to the wealth of the world
if the mountains were removed and cast into the sea. Not only that, but
it would curb to some extent the