just what they said to each
other as they prowled about the lanes in the dark. I suppose it was a
case of the attraction of opposites. For once, anyhow, in spite of
novelists, the course of true love ran smooth.

"Of course Jack had his fits of jealousy. You see, he couldn't
understand how in the world he had managed to pick such a prize without
having to shoot up the whole town. He even suspected me of having
designs on his happiness, and I suddenly realized the tremendous
difficulty of reassuring him. You know, it's a delicate business,
disclaiming all desire for a woman. If you overdo it, you rouse
suspicion at once. When I said, 'Oh, no, _I_ don't want to....' Jack was
up and prancing about the room. 'Why, do you know anything?' he
demanded. I soothed him, telling him he knew I wasn't a marrying man.
'That be d--d for a tale. _I_ wasn't either till I met Madeline.' I had
a stormy time. The contrast between Jack's volcanic temperament and the
calm, meticulous flow of his courtship was comic. I was thankful when he
was finally married and gone to Ilfrocombe for his highly respectable
honeymoon. And then, a fortnight later, I got a telegram ordering me to
join his ship, the _Manola_, at Newcastle, as chief. We were shipmates
once more.

"There now began for me an existence which is rather difficult to
describe. In cargo-boats, as no doubt you know, the skipper and chief
can easily be thrown together a good deal. Jack and I of course were.
But Jack was under the impression that I existed for the sole purpose of
listening to his rapturous idolizing of his darling wife. He wrote to
her every day, and read the letter to me afterward. She wrote to him
every day, and when we reached port and the mail came aboard, Jack would
read the gist of it to me. It was like being married oneself. He would
lie back in his deck chair on the bridge on fine evenings in the
Mediterranean and suck at his cigar, sunk in thought. And then suddenly
he would bring out some profoundly novel and original remark about
Madeline. I had Madeline for breakfast, dinner, supper, and between
meals. It was trying, but it was nothing compared with the frightful
time I put in with him the voyage the baby was born. We were in Genoa,
and he wired home every day. I would march him up town in the evening
and stand him drinks, which he swallowed without looking at them. And it
never entered his head that it was possibly less important to me than to
him. When a t