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By The Morning Boat
by
“Such a mornin’ as this, when I come out at sun-up, I always seem to see her top-s’ils over there beyond the p’int, where she was to anchor. Well, I thank Heaven ‘Lisha was averse to goin’ to sea,” declared the mother.
“There’s dangers ashore, Lucy Ann,” said the grandfather, solemnly; but there was no answer, and they sat there in silence until the old man grew drowsy again.
“Yisterday was the first time it fell onto my heart that ‘Lisha was goin’ off,” the mother began again, after a time had passed. “P’r’aps folks was right about our needing of him. I’ve been workin’ every way I could to further him and git him a real good chance up to Boston, and now that we’ve got to part with him I don’t see how to put up with it.”
“All nateral,” insisted the old man. “My mother wept the night through before I was goin’ to sail on my first v’y’ge; she was kind of satisfied, though, when I come home next summer, grown a full man, with my savin’s in my pocket, an’ I had a master pretty little figured shawl I’d bought for her to Bristol.”
“I don’t want no shawls. Partin’ is partin’ to me,” said the woman.
“‘T ain’t everybody can stand in her fore-door an’ see the chimbleys o’ three child’n’s houses without a glass,” he tried eagerly to console her. “All ready an’ willin’ to do their part for you, so as you could let ‘Lisha go off and have his chance.”
“I don’t know how it is,” she answered, “but none on ’em never give me the rooted home feelin’ that ‘Lisha has. They was more varyin’ and kind o’ fast growin’ and scatterin’; but ‘Lisha was always ‘Lisha when he was a babe, and I settled on him for the one to keep with me.”
“Then he’s just the kind to send off, one you ain’t got to worry about. They’re all good child’n,” said the man. “We’ve reason to be thankful none on ’em’s been like some young sprigs, more grief ‘n glory to their folks. An’ I ain’t regrettin’ ‘Lisha’s goin’ one mite; I believe you’d rather go on doin’ for him an’ cossetin’. I think ‘t was high time to shove him out o’ the nest.”
“You ain’t his mother,” said Lucy Ann.
“What be you goin’ to give him for his breakfast?” asked the stern grandfather, in a softened, less business-like voice.
“I don’t know’s I’d thought about it, special, sir. I did lay aside that piece o’ apple pie we had left yisterday from dinner,” she confessed.
“Fry him out a nice little crisp piece o’ pork, Lucy Ann, an’ ‘t will relish with his baked potatoes. He’ll think o’ his breakfast more times ‘n you expect. I know a lad’s feelin’s when home’s put behind him.”
The sun was up clear and bright over the broad sea inlet to the eastward, but the shining water struck the eye by its look of vacancy. It was broad daylight, and still so early that no sails came stealing out from the farmhouse landings, or even from the gray groups of battered fish-houses that overhung, here and there, a sheltered cove. Some crows and gulls were busy in the air; it was the time of day when the world belongs more to birds than to men.
“Poor ‘Lisha!” the mother went on compassionately. “I expect it has been a long night to him. He seemed to take it in, as he was goin’ to bed, how ‘t was his last night to home. I heard him thrashin’ about kind o’ restless, sometimes.”
“Come, Lucy Ann, the boy ought to be stirrin’!” exclaimed the old sailor, without the least show of sympathy. “He’s got to be ready when John Sykes comes, an’ he ain’t so quick as some lads.”
The mother rose with a sigh, and went into the house. After her own sleepless night, she dreaded to face the regretful, sleepless eyes of her son; but as she opened the door of his little bedroom, there lay Elisha sound asleep and comfortable to behold. She stood watching him with gloomy tenderness until he stirred uneasily, his consciousness roused by the intentness of her thought, and the mysterious current that flowed from her wistful, eager eyes.