“That’s the sort of chap a woman had made of him. I’ve heard it said a
woman is the making of a chap, it’s true, if she’s a good woman she’ll
make a man of a fool, and if she’s bad she’ll make a fool of any man,
seems to me. Jinny Slade was bad. I’ve got instincts about things and
maybe that’s what made me so down on the business from the first—them
mulberry eyes of hers rose my bristles, somehow or another, but now
she’d fixed him there was no use talking.
“They took up housekeeping in Francis Street over the laundry, and not
wishing to mix up in their hymeneal bliss, I didn’t see much of Buck
for a month or more. The _Greyhound_ was out of dock and I brought her
over to her moorings at Tiburon, and I’d sit here just as I’m sitting
now, time and again, thinking of old times and the fool Buck was
making of himself, for we’d lost the cargo a trader had promised us
and our business was going to smash.
“One day I was leaning on the rail fishing with a hand line for want
of something better to do when a guy comes along in a boat—Newall was
his name—he’d known us for a couple of years, casual, and he’d just
put off from an Oregon boat that lay anchored a bit out.
“‘How’s Buck?’ says he, resting on his oars.
“‘Buck’s married,’ I says. ‘Married this month and more.’
“‘Well, I wish him luck,’ says Newall, ‘and who’s the lady?’”