He had wanted to say, What do you know about the way Hindoos live? You’ve never been to India, because he now could look straight into Cyrus’s sighted eye, as well as wear his shirts, and the parity in stature and bulk had opened up the possibility that he might be his father’s match in other ways. Sometimes, he imagined himself challenging the old man to wrestle, or to put on the gloves and go a round or two—fantasies both thrilling and frightening that had begun to grow in him in the past year, right along with the whiskers, sprouting from his chin and upper lip, and with the new inches in his height and the new muscle slabbed onto his ribs and shoulders, beard and inches wondrous gifts from nature, while the weight was more the fruit of his own husbandry: He exercised with the dumbbells ordered from the Sears Roebuck catalog last Christmas, played football and boxed at Andover because he’d read that boxing and football had transformed the vice president from a sickly kid into the hero who led the charge up San Juan Hill. Not that Nathaniel had ever been sickly or a weakling; he was in training for the moment, which he was sure awaited him somewhere in the future, when he would be called upon to lead a charge in war. Or to rescue people from a burning building. Or to capture a gang of Chinese bandits, as Frank Merriwell had done in the last issue of Tip Top Weekly. When the moment came, he wanted to make sure he was fit and tough and equal to the task.

“Intend to stand there all day?”

“Sir?”

Cyrus dropped his gaze to the crate wherein sacks of flour and coffee lay atop tins of beef, pears, and beans. Nathaniel eased down the ladder into the dory. The thwart, wet with dew, chilled his bare feet, and he felt a residual tackiness in the coats of spar varnish. He reached up and took the crate and stowed it forward.

“Y’know, we ought to build a floating dock like the Williamses,” he said. “Then we could step into this dory, no matter what the tide. It would make things a lot easier.”

“Reckon it might. But I never have believed that easier is necessarily better. ‘We glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience, hope.’ ”

“Romans?”

“Five, three through five. In the original, ‘experience’ would have meant ‘character.’ Therefore, it is through tribulation …”

“Yes, sir, I understand,” said Nathaniel, meaning that he understood his father’s interpretation; he did not understand how a floating dock could spare him tribulation sufficient to be harmful to his character.