to recall it. And if she
had any hope that Kate Waddington had missed the point, it died in her
when Kate answered in an indifferent tone:

"He? Oh, he seems to me to be a little promiscuous."

CHAPTER VI

The Tiffany house--I spare you full description--rambled with many a
balcony and addition over that hill which rose like a citadel above
San Francisco. From its Southern windows, one looked clean over the
city, lying outspread below. Even the Call building, highest eminence
piled up by man in that vista, presented its roof to the eye. I can
picture that site no better than by this; Over Judge Tiffany's front
wall hung an apple tree, gnarled, convoluted, by the buffets of the
sea wind. In autumn, when the fruit was ripe, stray apples from this
tree had been seen to tumble from the wall and roll four blocks down
into the Latin quarter.

From the rear, the house looked out on a hedged and sloping garden,
quite old, as gardens go in that land, for a pioneer planted it; and
from the rear gate of that garden it was only a step to the hill
mount. Thence one came out suddenly to the panorama of the Bay,
stretching on three sides; a panorama divided, as by the false panels
of a mural landscape, into three equal marvels. To left, the narrow
gate, a surge like the rush of a river always in its teeth and the
bright ocean, colored like smelt-scales, beyond. In front the Roads,
where all strange crafts from the mysterious Pacific anchored while
they waited their turns at the docks. Both in foreground and
background, this panel changed day by day. It might be whalers from
the Arctic which lay there in the morning, their oils making noisome
the breeze; it might be a fleet of beaten, battered tramp
wind-jammers, panting after their fight about the Horn; it might be
brigs from the South Seas; it might be Pacific steamers, Benicia
scow-schooners, Italian fishing smacks, Chinese junks--it might be any
and all of these together. As for the background, that changed not
every day but every hour what with the shifts of wind, tide and mists.
Now its tinge was a green-gold betraying pollution of those mountain
placers which fed the San Joaquin and the mighty Sacramento. Now it
was blue and ruffled, now black and calm, now slate-gray,--a
mysterious shade this last, so that when the fog began to shoot
lances across the waters, these fleets at anchor by Quarantine wharf
seemed argosies of fairy adventure. Even Tamalpais, the gentle