Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/24

 world's champion light-heavyweight away from my switchboard. I treated him with about the same courtesy a ferret shows to a mouse, but if you think that bothered Hurricane you're crazy! He was what you call insult-proof and sarcasm rolled off his good natured smile like rain off a mallard's back. He soon become as permanent as the East River and he was just about as exciting to me. Furthermore, he murdered all competition, because none of these lobby hounds which ordinarily moored at my board all day trying to promote themselves had any desire to get in a jam with a gentleman who made his living by being light-heavyweight champion of the world.

Well, as the days went by and Hurricane Sherlock continued to hang around me like a tent, I get a new angle on him. I see that while he may not mean anything in my young life, he's plenty important to others.

Prominent people such as heavy business men, high-powered actors, bankers, lawyers, osteopaths and bootleggers who stop at my switchboard to try and get phone calls, look on the light-heavyweight champion with open fascination. Some of them kind of timidly say, "Good afternoon, Hurricane," and when he grudgingly returns a careless nod, why, honest, they almost swoon with joy. Aren't men funny?

But that isn't the half of it. The other girls on the board make no mystery of the fact that they would be