"So again I learn something.... I'm tired."
"Come in then and rest."
"Yes, that's my wish," said Reuben, but he knelt and took Welland's hands and rested his forehead in the warmth of them.
"Art thou in need of me?"
"You've taught me how tomorrow is another region, so let it be—I'm not part of it tonight. I shall be forever in need of you."
"But there will be years...."
"When you die before me, a thing I do accept because I must, I shall be in need of you still, and will bear the need, and laugh sometimes, and work as you've taught me, and grow old—I swear I'm not afraid. I told my brother once I would sail with him to the Spice Islands. Where do children go, Amadeus?"
"Matthew, you may call me an old fart, you that's no bloody lamb yourself, but I can remember when I was a boy in Gloucester. More and more I remember it, the decent way of living there and the little houses—no easterly ever shook them houses, Matthew, tight to the ground the way they was, they a'n't got the wit to build no such way in Boston. Good, that it was. Eh, I remember that low-tide smell in my mother's kitchen, year 'round, call it a stink if you like, not me, you might say I was born to it. That was a good life—if a man could live Godfearing, not go whoring after strange inventions, listening at the Devil in his left ear."
"Oh, 'vast preaching, Joey, I got no heart for it."