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 Well, from that minute till we fin'ly reached the bustlin' village of Liverpool, Kid Roberts hung around Dolores Brewster like she was a glass bowl and he was a gold fish. They danced, eat, walked, talked, bridge-whisted, ouija-boarded, and whatnot together till they was the talk of the ship.

When the Irish coast looms up on the horizon the Kid bounces into our cabin at the witchin' hours of midnight and without no preliminaries knocks me for a goal by announcin' he's gonna wed Dolores Brewster at his earliest possible convenience. This was about the eighteenth romantical affair de heart which had occurred to the Kid since he come under my wings and about the first one to show the earmarks of bein' annoyin'ly serious on the part of both sides. I spent somthin' like two hours beggin', threatenin', pleadin', and arguin' with Kid Roberts against allowin' himself to be dragged to a altar before he had became heavyweight champ of the entire world. He sit on the side of his berth with a faraway and long-ago look on his face and a shoe in his hand, and when I get all through on the account I got to get my breath, he let forth a sigh and remarks to a near-by porthole:

"And to think—to think we're going to be married as soon as we reach London!"

Sweet Mamma, a guy in love is tough to take!

How the so ever, I'm still hopin' that somethin' untoward will come to the pass as of yore before this love's young dream can turn into a nightmare for me. My wildest hopes was realized the night we anchored in a river which the English has nicknamed