“Delia,” he said, “you was a great fool ever to have me. You ought to have taken advice.”
“What is the matter?” she said. “Why don't you tell me?”
“I 've lost the money,” he said. “The Captain warned me how apt a seafaring man is to lose money; but I did n't take any heed, and I went off with Calvin Green—”
“With Calvin Green! What did I tell you!” she said.
“Wait a minute—and I stopped into a jewelry store and bought you a pair of ear-rings, and I came off and left my wallet on the counter, the way that fool Joe Bassett did, to Gloucester. When I went back, the rascal claimed he never saw me before—said he didn't know me from the Prophet Samuel, as if I was born that minute. And now they'll all say—and it's true—that I'm a chip of the old block, and that I 'm bound to come out at the little end. There!” he said, as he opened a little parcel and took out the earrings. “There 's what 's left of five hundred and twenty dollars, and you must make the most of 'em. Hold 'em up to the light and see how handsome they are. I don't know, after all, but they are worth while for a man to pitch overboard off Cape Horn and harpoon whales two years for. All is, just tell folks they cost five hundred dollars, and they 'll be just as good as hen's-egg diamonds.
“In fact, I don't know but I sort o' like the situation,” he went on, in a moment. “It seems sort of natural and home-like. I should have felt homesick if I 'd really succeeded in getting this place paid for. 'T would have seemed like getting proud, and going back on my own relations. And then it 'll please everybody to say, 'I told you so.' There 'll be high sport round town, when it gets out, and we back water down to the old place.
“Come, say something, Delia!” he said, in a moment. “Why don't you say something about it? Don't you care that the money's lost, that you stand there and don't say a word, and look at nothing?”
“I don't want to say anything now,” she said, “I want to think.”
“Well!” said Captain Bennett, the next day, to his wife, “Delia 's got more spunk! I should have felt like laying right down in the shafts, in her place; but instead of that, to actually go and talk them into letting her keep the Cal-lender place and pay for it so much a month! And David's signed a paper to do it.”