“What news?” I asked.

“It’s this way,” says Jim.  “I told her how we stood, and that I backed down from marrying.  ‘Are you tired of me?’ says she:  God bless her!  Well, I explained the whole thing over again, the chance of smash, your absence unavoidable, the point I made of having you for the best man, and that.  ‘If you’re not tired of me, I think I see one way to manage,’ says she.  ’Let’s get married to-morrow, and Mr. Loudon can be best man before he goes to sea.’  That’s how she said it, crisp and bright, like one of Dickens’s characters.  It was no good for me to talk about the smash.  ‘You’ll want me all the more,’ she said.  Loudon, I only pray I can make it up to her; I prayed for it last night beside your bed, while you lay sleeping—­for you, and Mamie and myself; and—­I don’t know if you quite believe in prayer, I’m a bit Ingersollian myself—­but a kind of sweetness came over me, and I couldn’t help but think it was an answer.  Never was a man so lucky!  You and me and Mamie; it’s a triple cord, Loudon.  If either of you were to die!  And she likes you so much, and thinks you so accomplished and distingue-looking, and was just as set as I was to have you for best man.  ‘Mr. Loudon,’ she calls you; seems to me so friendly!  And she sat up till three in the morning fixing up a costume for the marriage; it did me good to see her, Loudon, and to see that needle going, going, and to say ’All this hurry, Jim, is just to marry you!’ I couldn’t believe it; it was so like some blame’ fairy story.  To think of those old tin-type times about turned my head; I was so unrefined then, and so illiterate, and so lonesome; and here I am in clover, and I’m blamed if I can see what I’ve done to deserve it.”

So he poured forth with innocent volubility the fulness of his heart; and I, from these irregular communications, must pick out, here a little and there a little, the particulars of his new plan.  They were to be married, sure enough, that day; the wedding breakfast was to be at Frank’s; the evening to be passed in a visit of God-speed aboard the Norah Creina; and then we were to part, Jim and I, he to his married life, I on my sea-enterprise.  If ever I cherished an ill-feeling for Miss Mamie, I forgave her now; so brave and kind, so pretty and venturesome, was her decision.  The weather frowned overhead with a leaden sky, and San Francisco had never (in all my experience) looked so bleak and gaunt, and shoddy, and crazy, like a city prematurely old; but through all my wanderings and errands to and fro, by the dock side or in the jostling street, among rude sounds and ugly sights, there ran in my mind, like a tiny strain of music, the thought of my friend’s happiness.