He wasn't sure just who the joke was on. He lay thinking about it. At three in the morning, when you can't sleep and the tide's in, you might get it mixed—who the joke was on.
But, no, the joke was on them, that they'd had their long slow deep In—Out—their whaling and their fleets, and that what came after was him—a tinkerer with other men's boats, a ship's carpenter who'd even work on houses. "Get Joe Doane to do it for you." And glad enough was Joe Doane to do it. And a Portagee livin' to either side of him!
He laughed. "You've got a funny idea of what's a joke," his wife said indignantly.
That seemed to be so. Things he saw as jokes weren't jokes to anybody else. Maybe that was why he sometimes seemed to be all by himself. He was beginning to get lost in an In—Out. Faintly he could hear Mrs. Cadara crying—Joe Cadara was in the sea, and faintly he heard his wife saying, "I suppose Agnes Cadara could wear Myrtie's shoes, only—the way things are, seems Myrtie's got to wear out her own shoes."
Next day when he came home at noon—he was at work then helping Ed. Davis put a new coat on Still's store—he found his two boys—the boys were younger than Myrtie—pressed against the picket fence that separated Doanes from Cadaras.
"What those kids up to?" he asked his wife, while he washed up for dinner.
"Oh, they just want to see," she answered, speaking into the oven.
"See what?" he demanded; but this Mrs. Doane regarded as either too obvious or too difficult to answer, so he went to the door and called, "Joe! Edgar!"
"What you kids rubberin' at?" he demanded.
Young Joe dug with his toe. "The Cadaras have got a lot of company," said he.