ildren--"

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
proposition. That feller's prospectus did read mighty reasonable,
Prudence."

"I know it did, Ira," she agreed cordially. "I believed in it just
as strong as you did. You warn't none to blame."

"Well, I dunno. It's mighty nice of you to say so, Prue. But they
told me afterward that I might have knowed that a feller couldn't
extract ten dollars' wuth of gold from the whole Atlantic Ocean, not
if he bailed it dry!"

"We've got enough left to keep us, Ira."

"Just about. Just about. That is just it. When I was taken down with
this rheumatiz and the hospital doctors in New York told me I could
never think of pacing my own quarter no more, we had just enough
left invested in good securities for us to live on the int'rest."

"And the old place, here, Ira," added his wife cheerfully.

"Which ain't much more than a shelter," he rejoined rather bitterly.
"And just as I say, it isn't fit for two old folks like us to live
alone in. Why, we can't even raise our own potatoes no more. And I
never yet heard of pollack swimmin' ashore and begging to be split
and dried against winter. No, sir!"

"The Lord's been good to us, Ira. We ain't never suffered yet," she
told him softly.

"I know that. We ain't suffering for food and shelter. But, I swan,
Prue, we be suffering for some young person about the house. Now,
hold on! 'Twarn't for us to have children. That warn't meant. We've
been all through that, and it's settled. But that don't change the
fact that we need somebody to live with us if we're going to live
comfortable."

"Oh, dear, if my niece Sarah had lived! She used to stay with me
when she was a gal and you was away," sighed Prudence.

"But she married and had a ga