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142 load Ruby up wit' a lot o' talk about me goin' to State's Prison. And I may be a prize-fighter, but I've got the right to ask if I ain't lived decent and done my work on the square. I've got"

"A prize-fighter?" interrupted the older man in the background. Then he strode valorously in between the two. "Do you mean to tell me, Miss Hayden, that a girl of your antecedents has—has come to have dealings with"

But he in turn was destined to interruption.

"Say, d' yuh want me to throw this old cuff-shooter out o' here?" was Gunboat Dorgan's crisp and angry demand of the girl.

"Stop it!" cried Teddie, with a stamp of the foot. "Stop it, right here and right now! I'm tired of all this. I'm so tired of it. I can't stand another moment of it!" Then, with a deep breath, she turned about to the old gentleman with the rose-bud in his button-hole. "It's been very kind of you, I'm sure," she said in a voice of laboriously achieved patience, "but you