Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/59

1866.] with a sudden blush and a dewy light in her eyes, catching her breath.

"I have made no mistake," she thought, vehemently. "Look in his face! It is the right home for Jerome."

As she listened to the footsteps coming up the stairway, she moved uneasily about the room, touching almost every article in it with the eager fondness of a child: she knew what it had cost her; for the house had been paid for by money she had earned; it seemed as if she could remember now every seam she had stitched, every page she had copied,—the days of heat and sickness and weariness, when she had almost given up in despair.

That was all over now; she could put her hand on the result in actual stone and mortar; and as she thanked God for it, she went about, woman-like, touching and looking for the hundredth time to enjoy it more utterly. Nothing was too trivial to give her pleasure: she measured the depth of the window-frames with her arm, tested the grain of the doors, felt the texture of the curtains; how warm and clear a crimson they were!—remembering how becoming they would be, and touching her worn cheeks with a quick smile.

She peered through into the open door from the dining-room into the room beyond: she meant that for the library; planning rapidly where on the gray walls their one or two pictures could hang,—how Jerome's old desk would fit into one corner, and her work-table in the other: the book-shelves were below, and the books and what other home treasures she had been able to smuggle with her; she would arrange them all to-night, after he was in bed.

In New York they lived in a crowded tenement-house, out of which Old Jacobus, as the boys called him, went to give his daily lessons. How he had argued and prosed for weeks as to whether they could afford these few days! although it was vacation, and Lufflin had sent free passes for the road. To-morrow he would know that the holiday would last always, and that the book could be finished which was to bring them bread. Madame Jacobus knitted her brows, counting for the twentieth time how many months the money she had would last: long enough for the book to be done, provisions were so cheap here.

So would they start afresh, thank God! There would be nothing here to tempt him toThe old look of defiance flashed over her face.

"It was no crime," she said, half aloud; and just then the door-knob turned.

Captain Lufflin, who had left her with conscience and grief both at work with her a few minutes before, opened the door with a half-scared look, pushing Jacobus before him, whose sleeve she caught eagerly, bidding him good-morning with a laugh.

"God bless us all!" said Lufflin. "The ways of women!"

M. Jacobus had a fisherman's corduroy trousers and red shirt hung on him, as one might say. He made a formal apology to Madame for sitting down to breakfast in them.

"But I like to clothe myself according to my occupation," he said to Lufflin, gravely. "I have begun at dawn to make my holiday, the time is so short; I feel myself quite of the sea already."

The clothes being too small for him, his gaunt legs and bony neck protruded above and below, capped by a brown, honest, homely face, over which thin, iron-gray hairs straggled.

"A younger man than I expected to see," thought the Captain; "but that's one of the faces that never grows old."

M. Jacobus munched his breakfast in silence, and then, clearing a space on the table, dragged out of his pocket one or two crabs, a sea-horse finger-length, and a general mess of slimy legs and tails.

"Cancer pagurus! Cirripedes!" triumphantly spreading them on the table-cloth. "The fruits of my morning's labor, except Hippocampus brevirostris, vulgarly called Sea-Horse, which stood to me in the sum of forty cents: it shall be saved in other modes of