In New York they lived in a crowded tenement-house, out of which Old Jacobus, as the boys called him, went to give his daily lessons. How he had argued and prosed for weeks as to whether they could afford these few days! although it was vacation, and Lufflin had sent free passes for the road. To-morrow he would know that the holiday would last always, and that the book could be finished which was to bring them bread. Madame Jacobus knitted her brows, counting for the twentieth time how many months the money she had would last: long enough for the book to be done, provisions were so cheap here.
So would they start afresh, thank God! There would be nothing here to tempt him to——The old look of defiance flashed over her face.
"It was no crime," she said, half aloud; and just then the door-knob turned.
Captain Lufflin, who had left her with conscience and grief both at work with her a few minutes before, opened the door with a half-scared look, pushing Jacobus before him, whose sleeve she caught eagerly, bidding him good-morning with a laugh.
"God bless us all!" said Lufflin. "The ways of women!"
M. Jacobus had a fisherman's corduroy trousers and red shirt hung on him, as one might say. He made a formal apology to Madame for sitting down to breakfast in them.
"But I like to clothe myself according to my occupation," he said to Lufflin, gravely. "I have begun at dawn to make my holiday, the time is so short; I feel myself quite of the sea already."
The clothes being too small for him, his gaunt legs and bony neck protruded above and below, capped by a brown, honest, homely face, over which thin, iron-gray hairs straggled.
"A younger man than I expected to see," thought the Captain; "but that's one of the faces that never grows old."
M. Jacobus munched his breakfast in silence, and then, clearing a space on the table, dragged out of his pocket one or two crabs, a sea-horse finger-length, and a general mess of slimy legs and tails.