"Yes, yes, Davy, but what? Everything I try to be, I fail in." Janet thought of the chance that lay in the distant city and wondered if she would have failed there.
"Well, I allus take it," Davy replied, "that the good God gives us jest as much t' do as we're able t' do, an' He wants it well done. He ain't goin' t' chuck jobs around t' folks that ain't equal t' doin' well what they has in hand. Fur instance," Davy pointed his remark with the stem of his pipe, "ye ain't such an all-fired good housekeeper as ye might be!"
"I know it, Davy."
"An' yer clo'es, while they become ye like as not, have a loose look in the sewin' that might be bettered. The fact is, Janet, ye ain't pertikiler 'bout the fussin' things! An' it may be, yer way lies in perfectin' yerself in the fussin's of life."
"Oh! you dear Davy!" Janet was laughing above her inclination to cry. "I do believe you are right. I'm going to pay particular attention to the little fussy things. Dear knows! if I do them all well, I'll have little time for discontent." She stood up—she and Davy were in the living room, while Mark was doing duty aloft—and flung her strong, young arms above her head.
"Davy, I wish just once in my life I could—let myself go! I don't care much how, but just go! I'd like to take a ship out to sea, not the bay but the open, middle ocean, and go just where I pleased."
"Ye'd get wrecked fust thing!" broke in Davy.
"But I'd be doing something big until I got wrecked. Or I'd like to be alone on a great desert where I could shout and dance and sing, and no one would be there to call me mad."
"But ye'd be mad, jest the same." Davy was watching the flashing face uneasily. The gossip that had drifted to him had but strengthened his love and care for Billy's girl. He was a hardy support now, protecting this free nature from outer harm and inward hurt.
"No, no, Janet! Don't hanker arter the ocean nor the desert till ye know how t' handle yerself. Oceans an' deserts ain't no jokes fur greenhorns. I heard Mark say the bay was froze over. That don't happen often, so early as this."