Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/252

226 earthquakes as he tried to pace with gentlest tread, while they thrashed out the momentous problem.

"To think of the new home is wonderful," she said in German, for this they talked when together. "Do the doctors truly believe I shall be stronger if we live at New York? Is there, indeed, hope of health again? Ah, but it is risking all we have saved in these twenty-five years, and"

The captain no longer withheld his voice and it boomed through the little house with a hurricane note, though he meant it to be only reassuring:

"But the gain is wonderful. Such a home as I have found last voyage—in the country, in the hills, near New York. There is life in the air, and it will make you well every day. And better than that, what is everything to you and me, I shall be with you almost a whole week every voyage—almost a week in a month. Now, when I must sail from Liverpool, I am home here in Antwerp with you perhaps two days a month, perhaps not at all when storm and fog delay my ship, or when the