Page:Fighting Back (1924).pdf/83

 That shot me out of my chair! "What?" I gasps. "Have you got unmarried to Kid Roberts?"

Dolores throws a blush which would of made a rose wince with envy and then she frowns.

"Joe, I must ask you not to repeat that vulgar sobriquet that Kane has adopted as a mask for his beastly pugilistic activities," she tells me. "I loathe it! Fancy—Mrs. Kid Roberts! Oh!"

"But there ain't nobody calls you Mrs. Kid Roberts," I says, in what I hope is a soothin' voice. "Everybody knows you as Mrs. Kane Halliday and there's a name with some stuff to it!"

"Well, they will know me hereafter as Dolores Brewster!" she snaps, comin' back and sittin' down again. "Possibly as Senator Brewster!"

"I—eh—well, for one thing," I says, tryin' to lighten the atmosphere, "it would look kind of funny to see in the paper, 'Dolores Brewster and Kane Halliday have taken a suite at the Ritz,' wouldn't it?"

Dolores laughs, but quickly gets serious again.

"You will never see anything like that, Joe," she says. "Kane and I have come to the parting of the ways. Why, I'm virtually an unmarried woman now, am I not? Do I ever see my husband?"

"Well," I says, "that ain't altogether the Kid's—eh—Kane's fault, now is it? I bet if you hadn't blowed to Europe he'd of been here long ago and everything would of been jake. Why, the boy's simply dyin' on his feet from the dread disease of love. He always was maniacal about you, is now and always will be!"