Eyes did it as they always will. So they went down to Yale and by the Fraser steamboat to New Westminster, and they put up at Indian Annie's as aforesaid and the row in the Mill happened and Quin saw Pete and he knew Jenny had come, and he smiled and licked his lips.
The very next day after Pete's swift acceptance of that noble position in the hierarchy of the Mill, the Wedger-Off-Ship, and after the drunken jamboree at Indian Annie's, Pete and Mrs. Pete moved the torn dressing-gown, etc., into Simmons' vacated shack. For Simmons had gone to Victoria in the S.S. Teaser, that old scrap-heap known to every one on the Sound, or in the Straits of Georgia or San Juan de Fuca, by her asthmatic wheezing. Pete's and Mrs. Pete's etc. comprised one bundle of rags, and a tattered silk of Jenny's, and two pairs of high-heeled shoes (much over at the heel) and a bottle of embrocation warranted to cure everything from emphysema to a compound fracture of the femur, and a Bible. Pete had knocked Jenny over with that on more than one occasion.
The traps that Simmons left in his shack he sold to Pete for one dollar and two bits, and they were well worth a dollar, for they comprised two pairs of blankets of the consistency of herring-nets and a lamp warranted to explode without warning. He threw in all the dirt he hadn't brushed out of the place during a tenancy of eight months, and made no extra charge for fleas. But Jenny was pleased. It was her first home, mark you, and that means much to a countess or a klootchman. Pete had wedded her at Kamloops and taken her to Cultus Muckamuck's right off, for there were no other men around there but old Cultus, and his Mary looked after him if he needed it.
So now Jenny grew proud for a while, and felt that to have a whole house to herself and her man was something. She forgave him her black eye, the poor dear, and she mended the tulips carefully in a way that would have given the mistress of a sewing school a fatal attack of apoplexy. She worked the rent together with gigantic herring-boning like the tacking of a schooner up some intricate channel with a shifting wind.
Then she swept the shack and set out her household goods the boots and the Bible. The boots had been given her by a Mrs. Alexander, sister to the donor of the dressing-gown, and the Bible (it had pictures in it) was the gift of a Methodist Missionary who saw she was very pretty. So did his wife, so everything was safe there.
The bed belonged to the shack, that is, to the Mill, to the Quins, and as it was summer there was no need to get better blankets. Jenny laid the precious tulips on it and the bed looked handsome enough for Helen, she thought, or would have thought if she had ever heard of her, and Pete admired it greatly.
They set out to be happy as people will in this world. Jenny had a piece of steak cooked for Pete's dinner and she laid the newspaper cloth very neatly, and put everything, beer, bread and so on, as well as some prunes, quite handy.
"By gosh, I'm hungry, old girl," said Pete, as he marched in at noon.
"It's all ready, Pete," she said, smiling. The smile was a little sideways, owing to last night. "Sit down and be quick."
There was need, for the Mill only let up for the half hour.