There was a turn-table for the cable cars at the foot of Market Street. The cars were coming down in constant procession, and the turn-table was busy. It was a regular merry-go-round kind of an affair. It interested me, but it didn’t interest me so much that I had no eye for a girl who stood beside me at the edge of the thing. It seemed to me right then—fresh from a tedious train ride, where I’d been penned in with a frumpy set of women passengers—that I had never seen a prettier girl. She had her finger pointed at some one on the turn-table, and was saying “Father!” over and over, with a new inflection on the word every time she spoke it. Her finger traveled as the table revolved, and I was able to pick out father fight away. I was right-down sorry for that girl when I laid eyes on father. Father was grinning like a sculpin in deep water, and he was good and drunk, and he was evidently taking a joy ride on that turn-table.
It struck me right then, as a stranger, that San Francisco had a good trait pretty well developed; it was willing to let a man mind his own business as long as he didn’t make too much of a nuisance of himself. The street-car men did not push father off the turn-table, and two policemen took a look at him and went off about their business.
I took a good look at the man, too, when the turntable brought him near me and stopped to let a car on. He had a face about as square as the front of a safe, and his nose was the shape of a safety-lock knob, and was red. His pot-bellied body was set on legs like crooked wharf pilings. I had father sized up in a second. Double-breasted blue coat, cap of blue, with the peak pulled rakishly down over one eye, gray beard which radiated in spills from his chin like tiller spokes—he was a steamboat man, sure! I don’t know what in the devil possessed me to butt in and make certain—perhaps I wanted to start something so as to get a rise out of the girl. I’m not naturally fresh and you may be sure I was in no mood for a flirtation. I was crusted with Yankee reserve even when I was young. But that impish air of San Francisco was in my nostrils—did you ever sniff it? It makes your head buzz and your thoughts froth, and it takes hold of an Easterner as quickly as a stiff cocktail grabs a man who isn’t used to a mixed drink. You’ll do almost anything in San Francisco when the sparkle from that trade-wind gets into your lungs.
So I tipped father the wink.
“Give her the jingle when she starts again,” I said.
I was right in my guess. He crooked his forefinger, reached down, and yanked empty air.
“Clang!” he barked. In a few seconds the turntable began to revolve again. Father gave me as silly a grin as I ever saw on a grown-up man’s face. “Yingleyingle—yingle!” he yelled in falsetto. And away he went!
I never got a more awful look from a pretty girl than I got from that one when I turned and caught her eyes. There was nothing shrinking or bashful about her when she was mad, so I found out then and there.
“You fool! You have started him all over again.”
“He seemed to be well started before I came along, miss.” It was that confounded air that was making me reckless and saucy.