Chapter II

"YOU'LL get that net done, I reckon, before I come home again, Minnie?"

"That depends how long ye're gone," his wife answered with a smile, which in her young days had caught her James's fancy more than anything else about her.

He laughed now in a good-humoured sort of way, as he turned over the net and measured it with his eyes.

"And see to that young Jack-a-Napes of yours, and make him a good boy."

His wife put down her netting needle and looked at him. "Do you really mean that?" she asked gently.

"Of course I do! One can't get a bit of peace with him, first this, then that—you make him mind, wife! That's what I mean."

"I can make him mind," she said very seriously, "but as to making him good—"

He stooped and kissed her good-bye. Perhaps he did not guess what a pang of pain he had given her.

"I'm off," he said cheerily.

But she detained him by an earnest gesture. "Jem," she said, "he's your 'Jack-a-Napes' as much as mine! We must both pray for him that God may make him all we would have him—it's only He can."

The father nodded, and then, the last moment having come, he made a bolt for it, and went clattering down the little steps to the shore, while she stood watching till she saw him get into his boat and start with the others for his two or three days' fishing.

She did not know why her husband's mind had been specially full of young "Jack-a-Napes" as he had called their only boy, but she wished he had not spoken of it at the moment of their parting.

Jack made his way slowly back from the Vicarage. He had been too late, after all. When he sauntered into the cottage, his baskets were heavier than he liked, and his pockets were lighter.

"Why, Jack!" said his mother peeping into the basket.

For answer, Jack sat down and burst into tears.

"Aren't you well?" asked his mother.

Jack shook his head, and then sobbed out that father was cross, and he wasn't going to sell fish any more if people wouldn't buy, and if he was to be scolded when he did his best.

His mother looked at him for a few moments without speaking, and then she placed his food near him, and went on with her netting.

Jack wiped his eyes and ate his dinner in silence. He could not quite make his mother out.

"Jack," she said, when he had finished, "take one of those baskets and go out again and see what you can do. 'If a man will not work, neither shall he eat,' is the Bible rule. And I'm not going to have you idle all the morning, and then think you'll play and eat as usual."

Jack slowly went forth again, but he found most people supplied, and he had hard work to get even some of his fish sold.

Meanwhile, his mother prayed over her netting. She had been young and troublesome herself, she knew; and every day, even now, she saw how much patience God had with her!

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