Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/196

 You turn down my offer of a job and take his and the best I can get is a laugh! D'ye know he's going around telling people he expects to marry you this winter?"

Judy's face is like fire. "Where did you hear that tidbit?" she asks.

"Rags told me himself," I says. "I told him if he bothered you when you went to work in his office, I'd knock him dead."

Judy jumps up out of her hammock. If she ain't mad, then she's a wonderful actoress. "I wish you and Rags would stop discussing me as though I were a—a town character!" she says, ninety below zero. "And I am not in need of a protector. You've made it very embarrassing for me by threatening Rags, and I'd be glad if you'd wait until I ask you before delivering ultimatums for me. I haven't the slightest intention of marrying Rags, or—or anyone, ever!"

And she flounces into the house.

If I got a dollar for every time I got in wrong, I'd have a Rockefeller gnashing his teeth inside of a given year!

Well, for the next few days me and Judy don't exchange half a dozen words, and she even takes to eating her meals either before or after me, so's we don't meet at the table. This kind of treatment steams me up to the point where I have almost decided to move from Mrs. Willcox's boarding house to a New York hotel, when Nate busts into my room one day and hollers he has finally signed me for a fight. The victim's name in round numbers is "Wild Bill" Killoran, which has broke down and confessed to being light heavy-