Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/215

 Kid got not only his heft but his class. He looks around the office approvin'ly, nods pleasantly to the charmin' stenog which is typin' seven letters I have dictated to myself, squats in a comfortable chair near a window and there he camps all through one of the most nerve-rackin' mornin's I have ever put in anywheres!

They was a million pugs and their managers which had to be shooed away and shut up without gettin' the old guy suspicious. Fin'ly at noon we had a excuse to go to lunch and the Kid seen that his dear old dad didn't come back afterward.

At last comes the time when we have to start West to begin trainin' for the big fight as per our contract. The Kid tells the old man at a dinner up at the Senator's palace one night that "business" will call him out of town for about a month. He says that this-job's the biggest one he's undertaken yet and that if he puts it through successfully he'll be fixed for life, all of which is true. Then, he adds with a happy smile, Dolores is goin' to be his sweet young bride.

"Provided," smiles Dolores, with a breath-takin' blush, whilst the Senator and the Kid's old man is slappin' each other on the back—"provided you give up your present—ah—profession, Kane!"

The Kid begins to choke over his oysters, and his old gent looks up kinda puzzled.

"And why, Miss Brewster?" he says. "Why should Kane give up the profession of engineering? Surely it is an honorable one and he's been tremendously successful at it, hasn't he?"