"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."