Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/233

Rh year, and it's wicked to desert, and they would shoot you for it anyhow, and whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth; but it does seem kind of hard when we want you so much at home that you have to be fighting them poor Chinamen when I've been sending money for their souls these thirty-seven years. But as long as we all have our health there ain't any real troubles I suppose.

"I don't mean to find fault and you mustn't worry about us. I'm as active as a cricket and Mary hasn't been ailin' any to speak of. It's been a good long spell of dry weather, and that's good for my rheumatism, but it wasn't very encouraging for the crops. The mortgage on the house and farm is due in six weeks, and I can't get a renewal, though it's only six hundred dollars, as you know. The bank people is that haughty about the thing that I don't exactly see how we can get around them.

"But where there's a will there's a way, and the Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and if we ain't got any cash, there's others worse off. Your uncle Joseph is breakin' up fast, and he's ten years younger than me. He's the last of