“First, you go _so_ fash',” he said to the children, as he drew a thread; “then you go _so_ fash'.” And as he worked he made a great show of labor, much to their diversion. But the sight of Joel's broad white sail had not brought pleasant thoughts to his mind; for Joel had hailed him, off the Shoal, the afternoon before, and had obligingly offered to buy his fish right there, and so let him go directly home, omitting to mention that sudden jump of price due to an empty market. “Wonder what poor man he 's took a dollar out of to-day! Well, I s'pose it's all right: those that 's got money, want money.” “What be you, Eli--ganging on hooks?” said Aunt Patience, as she tiptoed into the kitchen behind him, from his wife's sick-room, and softly closed the door after her. “No,” said the elder of the children; “he 's mending our stockings, and showing me how.” “Well, you do have a hard time, don't you?” said Aunt Patience, looking down over his shoulder; “to slave and tug and scrape to get a house over your head, and then to have to turn square 'round, and stay to home with a sick woman, and eat all into it with mortgages!” “Oh, well,” he said, “we 'll fetch, somehow.” Aunt Patience went to the glass, and holding a black pin in her mouth, carefully tied the strings of her sun-bonnet. “Anyway,” she says, “you take it good-natured. Though if there is one thing that's harder than another, it is to be good-natured all the time, without being aggravating. I have known men that was so awfully good-natured that they was harder to live with than if they was cross!” And without specifying further, she opened her plaid parasol and stepped out at the porch.