“I don’t know my Bible as well as I do the revised statutes, Sylvie,” he said, smiling at her, “but I believe there is a passage somewhere that states that a good wife is better than much fine gold, yea, more precious than rubies and all beautiful gems. Now with the thorough understanding that the Bible is right, let us sit down and have a little family conference about some things that a wife should know.” He brushed from her hair and shoulders the bits of torn paper, drew her on his knee and began to talk. The old Judge sat opposite, gazing mistily out of the window in the direction his son had taken.
For the first and the last time in his life Squire Phin did not tell the whole truth to the woman he loved.
But the sad, though unclouded resignation in the eyes of the woman, and the dumb gratitude on the face of the old man opposite when he had finished, made his lie a holy one.
CHAPTER XXIII—HIRAM LOOK’S TWO LIVELY BUSINESS ENGAGEMENTS
WITH CAPTAIN NYMPHUS BODFISH OF THE “EFFORT”
Old Zibe Haines walked out one day,
And a barbed wire fence it stopped his way.
Never climbed over, never crawled through,