I should like to have your company very much."
Captain Elisha drew a long breath.
"Thank you, Caroline," he answered. "I appreciate your askin' me, I
sartinly do. And I'd rather go with you than anybody else on earth.
But I was cal'latin' to hunt up some little round-the-corner chapel, or
Bethel, where I'd feel a little bit at home. I guess likely your church
is a pretty big one, ain't it?"
"We attend Saint Denis. It IS a large church, but we have always been
connected with it. Stephen and I were christened there. But, of course,
if you had rather go somewhere else--"
"No, no! I hadn't anywhere in particular to go. I'm a Congregationalist
to home, but Abbie says I've spread my creed so wide that it ain't
more'n an inch deep anywhere, and she shouldn't think 'twould keep me
afloat. I tell her I'd rather navigate a broad and shallow channel,
where everybody stands by to keep his neighbor off the shoals, than I
would a narrow and crooked one with self-righteousness off both beams
and perdition underneath.
"You see," he added, reflectively, "the way I look at it, it's a pretty
uncertain cruise at the best. Course there's all sorts of charts, and
every fleet is sartin it's got the only right one. But I don't know.
We're afloat--that much we are sure of--but the port we left and the
harbor we're bound for, they're always out of sight in the fog astern
and ahead.
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