Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/254

228 when we hoped for children, and this was to be the beginning of their fortune? Why carry the money on your ship? Why take it with you?" "Mein Gott, sweetheart mine, is not the old Wasdale safe as the dry land? Is not the old vessel safer than the banks, which, as they say in New York, bust higher as a kite every little while? Perhaps they give me a piece of paper worth ten thousand dollars in Antwerp. When I dock in New York, perhaps the bank has gebust while I am in mid-ocean, then my paper is worth nothing; the money is a total loss. In the Wasdale, in my room, in my safe, it is mine, and I have never lost a life, much less ten thousand good dollars. You do not worry when I go to sea. Am I not worth as much as our stocking full of gold? Answer me that, my Flora."

He did not know through how many nights, when she heard the winter gales from the North Sea cry over the roof, a quivering agony of fear had gripped her wide-eyed lest the Wasdale might have met disaster. But experience had taught the wife that no argument could prevail