The Postmaster

"Well, I’m sorry, for the firm’s sake," he says. "It won’t seem natural for the Fair Breeze to make port without you in command. Cap’n, you’re goin’ to miss the old schooner."

"Cal’late I shall—some—along at fust," I told him. "But I’ll get over it, same as the cat got over missin’ the canary bird’s singin’; and I’ll have the cat’s consolation—that I done what seemed best for me."

He laughed. He and I were good friends, even though he was ship-owner and I was only skipper, just retired.

"So you’re goin’ back to Ostable?" he says. "What are you goin’ to do after you get there?"

"Nothin’; thank you very much," says I, prompt.

"No work at all?" he says, surprised. "Not a hand’s turn? Goin’ to be a gentleman of leisure, hey?"

"Nigh as I can, with my trainin’. The ’leisure’ part’ll be all right, anyway."

He shook his head and laughed again.

"I think I see you," says he. "Cap’n, you’ve been too busy all your life even to get married, and—"

"Humph!" I cut in. "Most married men I’ve met have been a good deal busier than ever I was. And a good deal more worried when business was dull. No, sir-ee! ’twa’n’t that that kept me from gettin’ married. I’ve been figgerin’ on the day when I could go home and settle down. If I’d had a wife all these years I’d have been figgerin’ on bein’ able to settle up. I ain’t goin’ to Ostable to get married."

"I’ll bet you do, just the same," says he. "And I’ll bet you somethin’ else: I’ll bet a new hat, the best one I can buy, that inside of a year you’ll be head over heels in some sort of hard work. It may not be seafarin’, but it’ll be somethin’ to keep you busy. You’re too good a man to rust in the scrap heap. Come! I’ll bet the hat. What do you say?"

"Take you," says I, quick. "And if you want to risk another on my marryin’, I’ll take that, too."

"Go you," says he. "You’ll be married inside of three years—or five, anyway."

"One year that I’ll be at work—steady work—and five that I’m married. You’re shipped, both ways. And I wear a seven and a quarter, soft hat, black preferred."

"If I don’t win the first bet I will the second, sure," he says, confident. "’Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands,’ you know. Well, good-by, and good luck. Come in and see us whenever you get to New York."

We shook hands, and I walked out of that office, the office that had been my home port ever since I graduated from fust mate to skipper. And on the way to the Fall River boat I vowed my vow over and over again.

"Zebulon Snow," I says to myself—not out loud, you understand; for, accordin’ to Scriptur’ or the Old Farmers’ Almanac or somethin’, a feller who talks to himself is either rich or crazy and, though I was well enough fixed to keep the wolf from the door, I wa’n’t by no means so crazy as to leave the door open and take chances—"Zebulon Snow," says I, "you’re forty-eight year old and blessedly single. All your life you’ve been haulin’ ropes, or bossin’ fo’mast hands, or tryin’ to make harbor in a fog. Now that you’ve got an anchor to wind’ard—now that the one talent you put under the stock exchange napkin has spread out so that you have to have a tablecloth to tote it home in, don’t you be a fool. Don’t plant it again, cal’latin’ to fill a mains’l next time, ’cause you won’t do it. Take what you’ve got and be thankful—and careful. You go ashore at Ostable, where you was born, and settle down and be somebody."

That’s about what I said to myself, and that’s what I started to do. I made Ostable on the next mornin’s train. The town had changed a whole lot since I left it, mainly on account of so many summer folks buyin’ and buildin’ everywhere, especially along the water front. The few reg’lar inhabitants that I knew seemed to be glad to see me, which I took as a sort of compliment, for it don’t always foller by a consider’ble sight. I got into the depot wagon—the same horse was drawin’ it, I judged, that Eben Hendricks had bought when I was a boy—and asked to be carted to the Travelers’ Inn. It appeared that there wa’n’t any Travelers’ Inn now, that is to say, the name of it had been changed to the Poquit House; "Poquit" bein’ Injun or Portygee or somethin’ foreign.