“‘Well, woman or girl don’t matter,’ I says, ‘you ain’t the age for marrying, nor the sort of chap to make good at the game.’ We went at it hammer and tongs, me trying to pump sense into him like a chap trying to pump up a burst bicycle tyre, but at last, somehow or another, I began to get the better of the business and bring him to reason and by two in the morning I’d brought him to own he was a damn fool and marriage a mug’s game. I went to bed happy, and next day he turned up at noon with a flower in his coat and looking as if he’d gone queer in his head.
“What’s the matter with you?” I says.
“‘I’ve just been married,’ says he.
II
“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?’”