Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/53

 the reekin' din of a cheap fight club. He'd exchanged a suite at the Ritz with one of them trick valets to button his collar and fix his "bawth" for a scraggy hole in a twelfth-class hotel—as up against it as Rumania, and with a roughneck like me, which hardly spoke his language, for a companion. A drop, hey?

As I lamped him over the top of my paper I wondered what else he'd gave up. Was they by any chance a—

"What's the mad rush to New York for, Kid?" I yawns suddenly. "A Jane?"

He give a start like a frightened deer. He was always like that, even in the ring—a blur of flashin', quick, nervous moves. He couldn't sit down five minutes in a room. In the course of a ordinary conversation I bet he'd walk ten miles back and forth across the floor, remindin' you of a tiger in a cage at the zoo. It used to make me uneasy and restless watchin' him, on the level!

Now he lets forth a sigh and comes away from the window. Instead of answerin' my question, he stops opposite me and says: "Are you—eh—married?"

"Me?" I grins. "No—I got that bump over my right eye fallin' downstairs whilst a child." Then a sudden thought hit me like a wallop on the jaw. "Say!" I yells, jumpin' up. "You ain't thinkin' of—you ain't gonna get wed on me?"

The Kid smiles and pats my arm.

"Calm yourself," he says. "The most colossal ass in the world would hesitate at doing that without a penny to his name."

"Yeh?" I sneers. "Evidently you never seen the