“Then you have something coming.  Quite a bar in the winter time, Matt, quite a bar!  Good many tickets been lost on that bar, Matt, so you ought to have more than a nodding acquaintance with it.  You’re going second mate in the Quickstep.  She’s carrying redwood shingles from Eureka to the Shingle Association’s air-drying yards up river at Los Medanos at present, and she’ll get to Los Medanos Sunday afternoon, so you’d better get there about the same time, in order to turn to discharging bright and early Monday morning.  And you’ll have to step lively, Matt.  The Quickstep lives up to her name, and the way they put shingles into that vessel is a scandal.”

“Shingles are nice stuff to handle,” Matt ventured.

“Not redwood shingles, Matt.  All right after they’re dry, but when they come fresh from the saws they bleed a little, so be sure and wear gloves when you handle them.  If you have a cut on your hand that redwood sap may poison you.  I think you’ll like the Quickstep, Matt.”

“It doesn’t matter whether I do or not,” Matt replied humorously.  “You always do things for me without consulting me anyhow.”

“Why, you don’t mind, do you, my boy?  It’s all for your own good.”

“I can bear it, sir, because one of these bright days I’m going to do something without consulting you.”

Cappy favored him with a sharp glance.  “As the street boys say,” he flashed back, “‘I get you, Steve!’”

“And having gotten me, Mr. Ricks, do you still want me in your employ?”

“Oh, certainly, certainly.  Any time I want to get rid of you I’ll fire you or have Skinner do it for me.”

Matt looked at his watch and rose.  “I have four days’ shore leave before me, sir,” he said, “so I guess I’ll be trotting along and make the most of it.  I’ll be at Los Medanos Sunday night.”

“Her skipper’s a big Finn,” Cappy warned him.  “Behave yourself, Matt.  He’s bad medicine for young second mates.”

“I’ll do my duty, sir.”

He took his leave.  As he went out the door Cappy gazed after him with twinkling eyes:  “Young scoundrel!” he murmured.  “Damned young scoundrel!  You’ll be ringing Florry up the minute you leave this office, if you haven’t already done it.  I’m onto you, young fellow!”

Matt Peasley took Florry Ricks to a matinee that very day.  Cappy, suspecting he might attempt something of the sort and desiring to verify his suspicions, went home from the office early that day, and from his hiding place behind the window drapes in his drawing room he observed a taxicab draw up in front of his residence at six o’clock.  From this vehicle Matt Peasley, astonishingly well tailored, alighted, handed out the heir to the Ricks millions, said good-by lingeringly and drove away.

“Well,” Cappy soliloquized, “I guess I’m going to land the son-in-law I’m after.  The matinee is over at a quarter of five, and those two have fooled away an hour.  I’ll bet a dollar Florry steered that sailor into a tea fight somewhere, and if she did that, Matt, you’re a tip-top risk and I’ll underwrite you.”