Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/215

 "Judy, twenty thousand's nothing startling these days, honest it ain't!" I butt in. "But with the thirty-five grand I'll get from these fights in London I'll have a real bank roll and then I'll hang my gloves on the wall for good, no fooling, Judy! Why, think how that trip across will broaden my mind and—eh—and all that business."

"You're evading the issue, Gale," says Judy, shaking her pretty head. "You don't want to give up boxing! You—you're actually proud of your profession. I can read that in everything you say and do! You do like to fight, don't you?"

With that she gets up from the desk and walks over to the window, looking out on Drew City and tapping her lead pencil on the pane. I get up, too, and stand beside her.

"Judy," I says, picking my words carefully, because I don't want to get in wrong with this eye-widener by no means—"Judy, I do get a kick out of box fighting, but not in the way you think. Of course they's a thrill in a hard-won battle, the roar of the mob, the plunk of your glove against body or jaw, and the fact that boxing is a man-to-man affair, not team against team, like baseball, football, basketball, and them other sports. That's the main thing which makes prize fighting so popular—it's a two-man struggle, and while you watch it you can put yourself in the place of either! You don't get that kind of a angle in watching two teams. But the big thrill I get out of being a leather pusher is the fact that it's the only thing to date at which I have meant something. Judy, I'm getting somewheres