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She loved forest and stream, and sylvan shades, well enough; but not well enough for that. So a human creature who could thus voluntarily exile himself must be peculiar. But Joe Chillis did not look peculiar; he looked as alive and human as anybody in fact, particularly alive and human just now; and it was not any eccentricity which had brought him to her this night, but a real human reason.
"Ten years o' school-teachin', an' house-work, an' sewin'!" cried he. "Yes, long before that you will be under the sod o' the grave-yard! You cannot send the boy to college." "Who, then?" smiling at his vehemence. "I will." "You, Mr. Chillis? I thought...." She checked herself, fearing to hurt his pride. "You thought I was poor, an' so I am, for I never tried to make money. I don't want money.
"Yes, I'm goin' home, ef I can borrer an oar," said Chillis. "My house ain't altogether safe without me, in sech weather as this." "Safer 'n most houses, ef she don't break away from her moorin's," returned the mail-carrier, laughing.
We picked him up outside, about a mile off the land. His boat had been upset, an' he'd lost an oar; an' ef we hadn't gone to his assistance it would have been the last of old Joe, I guess." "Hullo, Joe! Why don't you git up?" asked the man, seeing that Chillis did not rise, or change his position. "By George! I don't know what's the matter with him.
What was the reason? What with his mother's cooing whispers, and the passing of her light hand over his hair, Willie had fallen asleep. Mrs. Smiley lifted him in her arms and laid him on the lounge, covering him carefully, and touching him tenderly, kissing his bright curls at the last. Chillis turned to watch her he could not help it.
Smiley knew almost certainly that this visit was the last she would ever receive from Joe Chillis, and, though she tried hard to seem unaffected by the parting, and to talk of his return hopefully, the effort proved abortive, and conversation flagged. Still he sat there silent and nearly motionless through the whole evening, thinking what thoughts she guessed only too well.
Chillis?" asked the woman, hesitatingly, seeing that he seemed waiting to be invited. "Thankee. But I shall spile your floor, ef I do. I'm a perfect sponge, not fit to come near a lady, nohow.
Chillis; but it's frightful waiting for one's house to float away from under one's feet, or fall about one's head. And the tide, too! I have always feared and hated the tides, they have been a horror to me ever since I came here. It seems so dreadful to have the earth slowly sinking into the sea; for that is the way it appears to do, you know."
"Give me a week," she returned, and slipped away from him, taking the basket from Chillis, and ordering Willie to carry it, while she walked by the old man's side. "You have been lookin' at your new house?" he remarked. "You need not try to hide your secret from me. I see it in your face;" and he looked long and wistfully upon the rosy record.
But he is not half the man that I was at his age or, rather, that I might have been, ef I had had sech a motive for bein' a man as he has." "It is not difficult to believe that, Mr. Chillis. There is heroic material in you, and, I fear, none in Mr. Rumway." She spoke naturally and cheerfully now, as if she had no sentiment too sacred to be revealed about the person in question.
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