"What be you, Eli--ganging on hooks?" said Aunt Patience, as she tip-toed 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. * * * * * Though, on this quiet afternoon of Saturday, the peace of the approaching Sabbath seemed already brooding over the little dwelling, peace had not lent her hand to the building of the home. Every foot of land, every shingle, every nail, had been wrung from the reluctant sea. Every voyage had contributed something. It was a great day when Eli was able to buy the land. Then, between two voyages, he dug a cellar and laid a foundation; then he saved enough to build the main part of the cottage and to finish the front room, lending his own hand to the work. Then he used to get letters at every port, telling of progress--how Lizzie, his wife, had adorned the front room with a bright nine-penny paper, of which a little piece was inclosed, which he kept as a sort of charm about him and exhibited to his friends; how she and her little brother had lathed the entry and the kitchen, and how they had set out blackberry vines from the woods. Then another letter told of a surprise awaiting him on his return; and, in due time, coming home as third mate from Hong Kong to a seaman's tumultuous welcome, he had found that a great, good-natured mason, with whose sick child his wife had watched, night after night, had appeared one day with lime and hair and sand, and in white raiment, and had plastered the entry and the kitchen, and finished a room upstairs.