"Now, I've read books," continued Jim, "and they always end just where they really should begin. When in the book story they decide to get married, then they stop short. If I should ever write a story, which I ain't likely to do, with my little learnin', I'd not stop there, but I'd let that end only the first chapter and I'd let the story go on with its joy and sorrow and its hope and its fear and the problems big and little; the blessings so rare that follow along even as they do in real life.
"If I'm not tiring you, I'd be glad to give you another half chapter afore we all quit and turn in for the night."
Jim put down his empty tea cup with a smack of appreciation at his wife's proper brewing and deliberately cut off a fresh slice of tobacco and crushed it into the bowl of his pipe, and I knew that for at least a half hour, the story would go on, the story that was so real to him and now so fascinating to me.
"Bein' both of us very sure, and the Lord havin' given the sign o' His good pleasure, there beyond Brigus, we didn't wait long afore we were hitched up.
"We begun right here in this house and we started right in here the first night and we went to work on the flakes the next morning. We didn't go off no where's for a honey-mooning.
"I reckon there's no place a real woman would rather go at that time than to the new home where her life is agoin' to be lived, and that vacationing then ain't best for either. In any case we never thought a travelling, for you see the cod was running well and 'twas the height of the season and we had to fill the flakes, while we could.
"A man and a woman who gets married has to get acquainted and adjusted one to the other and there's no better place for learnin' to conform than right where they are agoin' to live and raise their children.
"Course a couple can just pretend for a spell there ain't any work to be done, but there is, and I reckon the sooner they face it, the better for all concerned. If you're agoin' to cut bait, there's no use standin' round dreadin' it.
"When I was a boy we used to have in our house a religious book with pictures of saints in it and every blessed one on' 'em had a ring around their head, halos, I think they call 'em; now I callate that a home ought to have some kind of a halo over it and it's easier to get it fastened on just right when your startin' married life and if you don't get it on then, like's not you'll never have a real home but just a house for feeding and sleeping.
"We got the halo fixed on, eh, Effie," and the fisherman's eyes confirmed his words.