"Delicate rats! You haven't nerve enough not to stand it," I said. "Brace up and be a man, and let this be a lesson to you. Good-bye."
Jack took my hand sort of mechanically and looked at me without seeing me, for his grief-dimmed eyes, in straying along the deck, had lit on that pretty little Southern baggage, Fanny Fairfax. And as I started off he was leaning over her in the same old way, looking into her brown eyes as if he saw a full-course dinner there.
"Think of your being on board!" I heard him say. "I'm the luckiest fellow alive; by Jove, I am!"
I gave Jack up, and an ex-grass widow is keeping him in order now. I don't go much on grass widows, but I give her credit for doing a pretty good job. She's got Jack so tame that he eats out of her hand, and so well trained that he don't allow strangers to pet him.
I inherited one Jack—I couldn't help
298
