Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/69

 about me havin' the Kid now that Roberts looked like a comer. Well, as I remarked before, we are paupers again, so I figured on diggin' up Dummy and sellin' him a piece of the Kid's contract for enough to room and board us till we got a fight. That night Kid Roberts was gonna rent a set of evenin' clothes and find out from Miss Irene Gresham how the course of true love was rannin', if at all, and I was gonna do the same with Dummy Carney, without the evenin' clothes.

Then things happened very fast!

I insisted on the Kid doin' a little road work that mornin', both to ease his nerves a bit and also to keep him conditioned in case we got a chance to fill in over in Jersey that week. We are runnin' through Central Park—the Kid with that long, easy stride which brung home the lovin' cups and the etc at college, and me puffin' along in the rear with the pantin' gait which come from the years I have dallied with the other cups. Along around Eighty-sixth Street they is a auto worth a steamfitter's ransom stuck at one side of the road, and a gayly bedecked chauffeur is changin' a tire. As we slow down to get around it, Kid Roberts stops suddenly and goes white.

"Irene!" he kinda gasps.

As my name has at no time been Irene I look around inquiringly and gaze upon a strange and interestin' sight.

They is a Jane sittin' in the back of that car, and she is regardin' Kid Roberts with a mixture of about thirty-eight different expressions, of which contempt is away in the lead. She's a beaucoup looker all right, but beautiful the same way them marble statues is