Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/34

 the Kid only grinned kinda sheepish, like he was ashamed he had been so clumsy. The hand was red and swollen a bit when we come to tape it before the fight, but it didn't look like nothin' serious, so Dummy soused it with arnica and let it go at that.

The Kid was cool enough, though a trifle pale whilst we was sittin' in the dressin' room waitin' for the semifinal to wind up, and his eyes happened to fall on a newspaper I had brung in. On the front page is a picture of some well-to-do heiress which had just come back to New York from Shantung or some place where she had been wilin' away the winter. Roberts snatches it up and gazes at it with a hungry look. I don't blame him. She looked as pretty as $5,000 a week would look to a motorman.

"What a rotten photo!" he mutters, half to himself. "She looks fit, though."

"Friend of yours?" I says, drapin' the bathrobe over his shoulders.

He's still in a trance over the picture.

"Oh—eh—yes—eh—quite so!" he mumbles. "How the devil can I get to New York to-morrow?" he inquires of himself, not even noticin' me.

I filed that one away for future reference. I heard a whole lot about the lady afterward—in fact, I met her under exceedin'ly odd conditions. But—

It was about ten o'clock when we swum through the cigarette smoke, pushed down the aisle, and climbed through the ropes, amid the dull rumble of excited voices, as the papers says. The mob, which had never heard tell of Kid Roberts before and, for all they knew,