Page:Anne's house of dreams (1920 Canada).djvu/160

 Captain Jim shook his head.

“No; and I don’t want to—at least, I think I don’t. Death grows friendlier as we grow older. Not that one of us really wants to die though, Marshall. Tennyson spoke truth when he said that. There’s old Mrs. Wallace up at the Glen. She’s had heaps of trouble all her life, poor soul, and she’s lost almost everyone she cared about. She’s always saying that she’ll be glad when her time comes, and she doesn’t want to sojourn any longer in this vale of tears. But when she takes a sick spell there’s a fuss! Doctors from town, and a trained nurse, and enough medicine to kill a dog. Life may be a vale of tears, all right, but there are some folks who enjoy weeping, I reckon.”

They spent the old year’s last hour quietly around the fire. A few minutes before twelve Captain Jim rose and opened the door.

“We must let the New Year in,” he said.

Outside was a fine blue night. A sparkling ribbon of moonlight garlanded the gulf. Inside the bar the harbor shone like a pavement of pearl. They stood before the door and waited—Captain Jim with his ripe, full experience, Marshall Elliott in his vigorous but empty middle life, Gilbert and Anne with their precious memories and exquisite hopes, Leslie with her record of starved years and her hopeless future. The clock on the little shelf above the fireplace struck twelve.