On the rest of us—­there he needed a curbing hand!  I discovered him negotiating to buy me a set of jade when he was getting one hundred dollars a month.  He would bring home a box of peaches or a tray of berries, when they were first in the market and eaten only by bank presidents and railway magnates, and beam and say, “Guess what surprise I have for you!” Nothing hurt his feelings more than to have him suggest I should buy something for myself, and have me answer that we could not afford it.  “Then I’ll dig sewers on the side!” he would exclaim.  “You buy it, and I’ll find the money for it somewhere.”  If he had turned off at an angle of fifty degrees when he first started his earthly career, he would have been a star example of the individual who presses the palms of his hands together and murmurs, “The Lord will provide!”

I never knew a man who was so far removed from the traditional ideas of the proper position of the male head of a household.  He felt, as I have said, that he was not the one to have control over finances—­that was the wife’s province.  Then he had another attitude which certainly did not jibe with the Lord-of-the-Manor idea.  Perhaps there would be something I wanted to do, and I would wait to ask him about it when he got home.  Invariably the same thing would happen.  He would take my two hands and put them so that I held his coat-lapels.  Then he would place his hands on my shoulders, beam all over, eyes twinkling, and say:—­

“Who’s boss of this household, anyway?”

And I had to answer, “I am.”

“Who gets her own way one hundred per cent?”

“I do.”

“Who never gets his own way and never wants to get his own way?”

“You.”

“Well, then, you know perfectly well you are to do anything in this world you want to do.”  With a chuckle he would add, “Think of it—­not a look-in in my own home!”

* * * * *

Seattle, as I look back on it, meant the unexpected—­in every way.  Our little sprees together were not the planned-out ones of former years.  From the day Carl left Castle Crags, his time was never his own; we could never count on anything from one day to the next—­a strike here, an arbitration there, government orders for this, some investigation needed for that.  It was harassing, it was wearying.  But always every few days there would be that telephone ring which I grew both to dread and to love.  For as often as it said, “I’ve got to go to Tacoma,” it also said, “You Girl, put on your hat and coat this minute and come down town while I have a few minutes off—­we’ll have supper together anyhow.”