"Well, ye see," Jean remarked, next evening, as the two girls, in the delicious after-supper leisure of house-cleaning day, sat together in the kitchen, "he didna even keek in on us, all day; an' he's said naething to the Mistress, for she's the same as ever an' couldn't keep it in if she was worried."
Daisy, her virile young self merely exhilarated, as it is with the healthy young, after the long day of muscular labor, was barren of speech but fruitful of glances out through the window, where the sunlight of the long evening laid an elbow of shadow at the root of each of the prim trees bordering Harrison's cement drive, and shone red upon the open doorway of the garage. Harrison was spending the evening out somewhere, and the big car was gone; but the electric brougham in which Lady Harrison—who merely "put on style" by her husband's request, and would really much rather have walked, or taken the trolley-car, on her trips downtown—paid her social calls or went shopping, stood invitingly in its place.
"Can the Missis run that thing?" said Daisy.
"Ey," said Jean, who had been regarding theyounger girl's curves and color a little wistfully, but none the less good-heartedly, "Ou, ay. She disna like it, though. She's a plain woman—a richt leddy, though she was na born to it, no more than him, ye ken."
"I wish she'd give that pretty car to me," said Daisy.
"Ay," Jean smiled reflectively, "nae doubt, nae doubt. If wishes were electric buggies, there's nane of us would tramp. She'd be daft enough to give it to ye, too, I doubt, if it wasna for her man. Ey, ey—whiles I wish I had him, just for a wee. I'd train him the way a mon should walk, so I would. Still, there's got tae be a master, ye ken, in every family. I wouldna like a man that was saft, all around. I'd want him tae be canny in business, like Sir Thomas, ye see—but I'd want tae be mistress at home.... But, by the bye, lassie, speakin' o' men n' cattle o' yon kind," Jean smiled to herself as she said this, and wished some man, for the good of his conceit, had happened along unexpectedly and heard this comparison, slipping out, as it had, by happy inspiration, "how wad ye like the evenin' out? The Mistress hersel' said that, as ye were a young thing and would likely be wantin' a good time, to give ye an evenin' to yerself whenever I could spare ye."
Daisy needed no second intimation. She bounced out of her chair, agile and untired as though itwere morning and she just up. Then she paused a moment, and her face fell a little.
"My skirt is all right," she said, "but I have no clean waist."
Jean paused; knuckles reflectively akimbo.
"What's y'r size, lassie?" she said.
"Thirty-eight."
"Thirty-eight," Jean's eyes opened; "losh, ye're fu'-breastit for a bairn. I doubt a waist o' mine wadna be much aboon yir fit. I'm wide across; but ye're fair wide too, an' then ye come out in front forbye. Gie your face a dicht off whilst I rummage my trunk."
A little less than half an hour later, Daisy,—her serge skirt brushed by Jean's friendly hand to an appearance of almost newness, and wearing a silk waist of Miss McTavish's that, with a few shrewd tucks here and there, had been reduced to fit Daisy's round, plump torso—came dancingly out between the stone gateposts at the end of the Harrison drive. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Every nerve tingled with the zest of life.
As she reached the sidewalk, a battered auto was just about to turn in the gateway through which she had come. At her appearance, however, the driver came to a halt.
"Hello, stranger," he said, sociably, "where d'ye think you're going."
Daisy, who knew how to "use her eyes,"assumed an expression which, just fitted the occasion.
"Got a dollar you ain't usin'?" enquired the chauffeur, who was her creditor of the jitney fare. He did not glance at her as he spoke, but continued to look straight before him in his characteristic, businesslike way—showing, as formerly, a humorous profile, an eye-corner that twinkled, and hair so thick and curly that he was obliged to keep his peaked driver's cap sideways to keep it on at all.
Daisy looked down, moving her toe with shyness, among the grass-roots at the edge of the sidewalk. "I have ten cents," she said, "for—for street-car fare."
"Carfare where to?" enquired the taxi-driver, promptly.
"Nowhere," said Daisy.
"They're a poor bunch there. Don't go. Stranger in town?"
"Oh, not too strange, you know," said Daisy, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.
"That's all right, then," the young man opened the fore-door of his car and moved over a little on his seat. "Jump in. I'll whirl you out to city park."
"Oh-h, no-o-o," Daisy made her mouth into a mischevious oval of protest, "I couldn't do-oo that."
"Why couldn't you?" the driver's head jerked half-around, in a brief study of her face. "Got to report to mother?"
"I couldn't afford it," said Daisy; "I'm in debt now, ain't I?"
"You're in debt," said the young man, "but your credit's good as long as I got the gasoline. Hop in!"
The girl stepped forward; set her toe on the running-board; then drew it off, and backed away.
"Try again," observed the driver, dryly; "one—two—three—go!"
"What's out at this city park?" said Daisy.
"Oh, pretty near everything. Dancing, ice-cream, trees, jollyers. Was you never out to a park?"
"Never with a fellow I didn't know," Daisy replied, in merry equivocation.
"Well, then, right here's where you make the break," the chauffeur remarked; adding, sententiously, "it's harder to start anything, the longer you wait."
"I won't be with you long," he pursued, after a moment, "if that's all you're worryin' about. I'm supposed to be workin'. I'll take you out to the dance-pavilion and make you acquainted with some of the fellows an' girls. Then I'll have to come back downtown again, and get on my run. I'll come out to the park again for you, abouteleven o'clock, and bring you home. How's that get you, youngster?"
"It sounds all right," said Daisy, "all except the coming-home part. Do I have to come home with you?"
"You bet you do," said the chauffeur stoutly, "or else it's all off." He reached out and drew the auto-door half shut; his mouth tilted up in a dry way, his eye slanted humorously upon her.
"All right," Daisy countered, "it's all off, then, if that's how you feel. I don't know as I'd have gone with you anyhow. I—I've got carfare—ten cents carfare—if I should take a notion to go."
"How you goin' to find your way?"
"Where?"
"Park."
"How d'you know I'd go to the park?"
"I know blame well you'll go there," said the chauffeur, "now I've told you about it. Kiddo, the hay sticks out o' your hair all over. What kind o' farmers was your people?"
"The kind that minded their own business." Daisy, with a little swing of her hips, turned away, chin and nose in the air; "Good-night, Mr. City Bug. I'm much obliged for your offer; but if I want to go to the park, I'll pick up somenicefellow uptown and get him to take me. Somenicefellow!"
"Here!" the chauffeur jerked out, rattling the door, "jump into this car, you—you—"
Daisy went on a few steps; then, just as her intended pilot was about to bang the door shut and start his engine, she turned.
"Can I come home with who I like, then, if I go?" she queried, dimpling all over as she wrestled with her merriment.
"Yes, blame you!" said the taxicab driver, "you can come home with the Devil, if you like. Come on—get in! Don't keep me here all night, waiting for a dead-head passenger to burn up four mile o' juice on."
Daisy stepped in and sat down, warm and flushed and round, right beside him. Then she had a good laugh, and thereby relieved herself.
"Take them bughouse streaks often?" her host enquired; his dry-pursed mouth, his careless hat, and his eyes that looked regardlessly ahead through the windshield, giving him, to Daisy, a kind of big-brother aspect—the look of a man to be trusted.
"This was easy," he said, presently, as the car rushed away down-street—the speedometer indicating that the speed limit was only being exceeded by ten miles an hour; "dead easy. Ain't you scared, kid? S'posin' I was a murderer or something, after all!"
"I'm not scared." Daisy slid a soft glance up at him.
"All right," said her companion, "for that, we go to the park, like I said—this time. I had a half a mind to ride you to the bridge and dump you into the river. I'm a revengeful son of gun when I'm crossed."
It was now about eight o'clock. The streets were filling with the promenaders of evening, each in his or her best "bib and tucker," enjoying the worker's well earned off-hour of spooning or strolling. Motorcycles darted in and out among the sedater and larger vehicles, exploding like machine-guns; in the seat of each a happy youth with either smile or cigarette or both, and often behind him, on a kind of pillion, a girl, with the happily-needful arm placed about him for purposes of support. Sometimes the girl was in a side-car, but then she was generally the motorcyclist's wife. Automobiles glided ahead or beside, down the smooth broad asphalt, like boats on a canal. As the street ribboned away behind Daisy and her driver, there showed gradually more green spaces on the streets. Before long, the houses grew few and drew away, as it were, from the roadside. Green woods scalloped the skyline. The asphalt ended, and they were running on a smooth-graded road, oiled to keep down the dust. There was an interval of quiet bowling along through sunset woodland, with Nature's lawns interspersing; then life, to Daisy's relief, beganto bubble and sparkle around them again. They had reached the gate of the park at the same time as two crowded street-cars; and, obeying traffic rules, halted to let the crowd of passengers—many-hued in their summer dresses as though one were looking at them through a prism—dance and chatter and giggle and stalk past, arm-linked or baby-toting or soberly single, until the road was clear. Then the curly-haired young man spun his steering-wheel, describing an easy and rapid turn; and they were sailing down a road straight as a line, with a great white pavilion awaiting them from the top of its smooth-lawned hill. On either side, down the walking-paths, came an endless stream of pedestrians, noisy and gay in their evening emancipation, with bare-legged youngsters breaking loose, racing and chasing across the green as Daisy had seen the calves do in spring.
Everybody was "out for a good time." The air was like a tonic; the park like a panorama. Between the capes of shrubbery and across the lawns, and about the thronged pavilion and along the governed paths, the evening breeze floated like a lily-breath, slow and cool and sweet.
"Well, here we are," said the driver, parking his taxi at the end of a long row of vehicles in front of the pavilion. "Sorry you come, now, ain't you? Yes, you are—not! Hey, don't knocka hole in the hood of my rig, just because you think you're done with me."
Daisy had popped out of her seat so quickly that she had bumped her head against the auto-top. Her spirits were at such a pitch of ecstasy that, in her haste to open the fore-door, she jammed the catch. She hauled and wrenched vainly at it, while her companion sat and grinned.
"Kind of a combination lock, huh, kid?" he observed, his eyes wrinkling and his shoulders shaking a little—his way of expressing merriment.
"Don't talk crazy," Daisy sat up, sucking a finger she had pinched in the mechanism. "Get this thing open!"
"Aw, no," the chauffeur was enjoying himself hugely; "let's just set here. We don't want to—hi, there!"
For Daisy had squirmed agilely out over the top of the door. In doing this, she had accidentally pushed the catch the right way; so that, as she jumped down from the running-board, the door came docilely open under her hand.
"That ain't stylish," remarked the taxi-driver, climbing out. "In this town, we open the doorbeforewe get out—not after. Come on, then, friend, and buy me a drink. You said you had a dime, didn't you?"
"Where is the dance?" said Daisy, lookingabout her delightedly as they ascended the broad flight of steps leading into the pavilion.
"Nobody ever dances till after they have a nut sundae or something," was the comment of her escort, "I'll race you upstairs, partner."
Daisy accepted the gage, and reached the stair-top one step ahead. The two followed a crowd of people through an arched double-doorway, and sat down at a little round table with metal underbody and two companionable, iron-spindled chairs. About them, the whole world, it seemed, was eating ice-cream or drinking colored compounds out of glasses through straws.
Through a door at the side of the ice-cream room, Daisy could see couples, on a long perspective of shining floor, whirling by in the conventional embrace of the dance. The thing got into her blood.
"Come on," she said, a moment or so later, as she hastily spooned up the last of her "sundae," "I'll give you the first dance, Mr. Man, if you take me out there."
"Now you got me," said the chauffeur, with a momentary sheepishness; "I don't dance. I'm a ballplayer." The speaker's tone, as he made this apology, would seem to indicate that the two were accomplishments impossible to find in one and the same person.
In the dancing-room, the chauffeur had a nodfor everybody and from everybody. The girls, especially, tilted heads on one side, or glanced up at him through the coquettish corner of the eye, or jumped up out of seats and buttonholed him and danced up and down in front of him—just according as they were sly, or coquettish, or impulsive. Some glanced in an armed way at Daisy, who seemed to be drawing a good deal of attention from the "boys" as she entered. Miss Nixon and her escort had arrived at a moment when the musicians were taking an intermission; and, as the benches along the side of the dancing-hall were filled, there was ample opportunity for a few introductions.
"This," said the chauffeur, stopping and putting his arm around the waist of a mighty man with sandy hair and a neck so red—naturally red—that it was almost scarlet, "is Baby Jock. Jock, this is a friend of mine from out among the homesteads. She is pretty near dead with staying at home nights, and I want you to show her a good time. I got to go back to my run.... Be back at closin'-time, kid, to see if you've changed your mind about lettin' me take you home." With this, and a careless parting salute, the taxi-driver slipped out, leaving Daisy with her new friend, the red-necked Colossus.
"Well," said Baby Jock, curving his hand around his chin and looking largely down at her,"the Scots aye drifts thegither, heh?... Don't tell me ye're no Scot, now, after that, lassie."
Daisy gave her mouth a little twist in lieu of answering, being absorbed in the scene before her.
"Yon Jamie," said her companion—nudging her lightly this time, to attract her attention, "forgot to leave me the name, when he left the lass."
"Eh?" said Daisy, a little distantly.
"The name, ye ken?" repeated Jock, "juist give me the nickname, if the name itself's too long." He continued to look at her in an amused way, waiting patiently. Presently Daisy turned, lifted her dancing eyes, and beamed on the big Scot.
"Ay," said Baby Jock, drily, replying to the glance, "ye're ready to talk at last, heh? 'Miss McKechnie', ye said the name was, didn't ye?"
"My name?" Daisy dimpled; "oh, my name's Daisy Nixon. Say what's the name of that boy who brought me here?"
Baby Jock stared, open-mouthed. Then he doubled up and slapped his knee.
"Heh, but ye're an odd buddy," he said; "but ye're canny, no to give ha'pence for the name if the mon himself's a'richt. Yon lad's name's Jamie Knight. Here's thae fiddles skirlin' again. Come on and have a dance, lassie."
As Daisy and her partner circled around the room for the second time, she heard a girl witha humorous nasal voice, one of a couple just behind, remark: "Say, that's like Jim Knight, ain't it. Brings a strange girl in here, and ties up the second best dancer in the hall. Look at the face on Leeby Cameron. Bet a quarter she has a word or two to say to her Jock, on the way home to-night!"
"Ay, she means me," said Baby Jock, with mock egotism, looking down twinklingly at Daisy. "Does that no make ye proud-like, to know the company ye're in. But just haud yersel', and I'll mak' ye prouder yet. D'ye see yon straight-backit fellow, with the stiff hair, third couple to the right from us?"
"Who's he?"
"Ye'll no be long in this town till ye ken who he is. Yon's Nick Cluett, the middleweight champion o' the boxin' ring. I dinna ken just where I stand in the dancin'—ye canna althegither go by what ye just heard oor neighbor, behind here, say—but there's nae doubt where Nick stands. He's the best on the floor, by long odds. I'll see that ye have the next dance with him. Nick, he never promises a dance ahead, so he'll no be down on anybody's programme for the next turn on the floor."
"Who's Leeby Cameron?" said Daisy.
"She's juist hersel'," responded Baby Jock,evasively, as the dance-music ended. "Hut, Nick, lad!"
A young man with heavy dark eyebrows and his hair combed straight up from a forehead with transverse wrinkles, as it were, ironed into it, came lightly across the floor, one hand in his pocket. As he drew near, Daisy saw that his hips and shoulders moved with a strong rigidity, as though all in one piece, and that his back was straight as a line. He had recently shaved, but not very closely; and all over his chin and cheeks black pepper-dots of stiff bristles pricked forth in a kind of index of the lad's superb virility. He had a kind of fixed smile, deprecating, almost apologetic. He carried his head canted slightly forward and down; and, instead of tilting it back when he looked up, merely raised his eyebrows. This habit was what had engraven the transverse wrinkles across his forehead.
"Well, Babe," he said to Jock, casting a quick but careless glance at Daisy, "what d'ye know!"
"I hae a lass here," said Daisy's escort, "wha's lookin' for a dancin' partner. Miss Nixon, I'll leave ye with Mr. Cluett while I go 'tend to my family affairs yonder," Jock humorously indicated the chair upon which Miss Leeby Cameron sat glowering; and, with a genial parting grin to Daisy, moved off toward his lady-love.
A man cannot excel in everything, and NickCluett, champion pugilist, was no talker. In fact, he looked for a moment as though he were about to walk away and leave Daisy standing in the middle of the floor.
"He says you're a fine dancer," primed Daisy.
Nick Cluett's eyebrows travelled up, and his dark face sloped at an angle, in its perpetually-smiling way, above hers.
"Want to try me?" he jetted.
"I don't mind if I do," said Daisy, demurely.
"Do anything once?—eh, kid?" commented Mr. Cluett, taking her upper arm in a hand of steel fibre, propelling her toward a bench, and drawing her down upon it in the manner of a man to whom girls had voluntarily given the privilege of handling them freely; "come to think of it, now, you can be a life-saver, if you like, see?"
"How?" Daisy glanced at him sidewise.
"Why", Nick Cluett crossed his knees, dropped his elbow across the uppermost leg, and leaned his broad shoulders forward till his hard bulging triceps muscle touched her arm, "Bob Masterman—he's the fellow looks after my business—is getting up a little party after the boxin' show to-morrow night, and bringing along his girl. How would you like to come asmypartner? Eh, little sporto?"
"I don't know," said Daisy, guardedly. "Where's the party at?"
"Our rooms, likely," said Nick Cluett, coolly; "little supper—game o' cards—any old thing to kill time. Bob!"
A plump man in a check suit detached himself from a group near by.
"Bob, Miss—what's this your name is, again?—Miss Nixon here's to have first chance to round out our little party of four to-morrow night. She'll let you know at the end of the dance if she can come."
"Sure she'll come," said Mr. Masterman, unctuously, as he held Daisy's hand and breathed cigar-breath copiously into her face; "sure she'll come." He pumped the hand up and down, and tilted his fat face to one side.
"Beat it," said Mr. Cluett, tersely. Mr. Masterman promptly obeyed, glancing back coquettishly over one plethoric shoulder as he rejoined his group.
The music started again. Nick Cluett and Daisy stood up, linked, and were off. Probably no greater sum total of sheer glowing virility was ever contained in any couple of dancers than in the flushed ecstatic girl and the dark puma-like man who danced, as he fought, with a beautiful "footwork" that the eye could admire, but that the watcher could not emulate. Daisy, who had always been a good dancer, was on her mettle as she saw other couples stop to watch; and the twofooted it in a perfect accord that was a treat to see. Masterman, who never had to be told verbally what any situation in which Cluett was concerned required, slipped over and passed a bill and a billet to the orchestra leader at the time when the music usually came to a pause; and the dance continued without the usual intermission. Cluett, to whom dancing was as casual as boxing practice, had his attention free to contemplate his partner as she glided, warm and full of zest and delight, in the sinewy band of his arm. What with his dancing reputation and his boxing fame, he had been surfeited with attention from girls, until they had become a little flat and flavorless to him; but there was something so new and natural in Daisy's expression, and something so fresh and forthright in what he had heard of her talk, that his relish awoke.
"You're some kid," he said, squeezing her arm as he led her to the seat at the side of the room, when the dance was done; "hey, waiter!" An attendant with a tray came over, lithely and quickly.
"Name your dope, Dimples," said Mr. Cluett.
"Anything," responded Daisy, answering with all her merry might to the name bestowed, as she beamed up into the dark face with its hard lines and continual smile, "anything that you think's good for me, Mr. Cluett."
"Nut sundae—twice," her companion directed,briefly, with a sidewise jerk of his head at the tray bearer, who bowed response as to a peer of the realm.
"Well, Sweetness," Nick Cluett said, a moment later, as they applied themselves to the refreshment, "how about it?"
"How about what?" Daisy's tone was ingenuous and her look demure.
"You know," said Mr. Cluett; "our little party?"
"I don't know," Daisy put her head on one side teasingly.
"That's what you said before," observed Mr. Cluett; "ain't you thought it over yet?"
Daisy tilted her head over to the other side, displaying a round line of cheek and one of the dimples to which Mr. Cluett had previously alluded.
"Maybe," she murmured.
"Well," said Mr. Cluett, "I ain't no hand at coaxin', so we'll let it go at that. Bob'll see you, after the next two dances. I got to go now, for a little work-out with the mitts, before bedtime. I'd like to have had another dance." This was a long speech for the taciturn Nick Cluett; and he breathed with relief as he got it "off his system".
"I'll go to your party, I guess," said Daisy, "so you can tell that Mr. Masterman to never mind seeing me. I'm not strong enough to stand seeing him any more than once in an evening."
Mr. Cluett's fixed smile momentarily deepened a little, as he rose to take his leave. "I suppose, as things is, it's lucky you don't take very strong to Bob, or you'd have let me go away still guessin'—eh, little one? I'll tell him it's settled, then. But don't you go and throw me down."
Jimmy Knight called with his jitney for Daisy, at about midnight. The trip home was made in comparative silence; but, as the car stopped at the Harrison gate, he said, "what are you goin' to do with yourself t'mor'? Got a date, I s'pose.... Yes, of course you have—I see it in your eye. Won't you tell Brother Jim where you're goin'?"
Daisy waited till she had dismounted and stepped just within the big stone gateposts, before she answered. Then she looked down thoughtfully, moving her toe in the gravel.
"I'm—oh, I'm just—just taking a dare," she said; then laughed outright as she glanced up and met his mystified look. "Good-bye, Jimmy Knight—and thanks for the 'lift'."
Daisy stood before her mirror, "fixing" her hair. Whether it was Daisy's native knack of coiffure, or whether it was that her hair was of that wavy kind which "fixes" becomingly almost by itself, she secured the effect she wanted without much trouble. The dark-blue dress she had bought with fifteen dollars borrowed from Jean, and to which she had pinned a lace collar, set off her neck well. She made a little face at herself in the looking-glass and turned about, just in time to face Jean, who had entered quietly, shutting the door behind her.
"What like o' company is yon ye're keepin', lassie?" Jean, as she spoke, sat down on the edge of the bed, spreading out her strong digits over her knees in a masculine attitude.
"What company?" said Daisy, a little puzzled. She had made no mention of her party to Jean.
"Yon two bidin' down in the kitchen the now," Jean replied, regarding Daisy in a slow speculative way, as though searching for some characteristic she had perchance overlooked in forming her estimate of the girl; "a mon wha's breath smells of thae lozenges, and a thick-legged wenchthat rolls her eyes aboot. They askit for you, by your ain name, too. Did ye tell them to ca', or," Jean's tone grew sternly hopeful, "shall I send them packin'?"
"I guess it's me they want," said Daisy, recognizing Masterman in Jean's description of the man. Then she added, meeting the elder woman's glance challengingly, "I'm going to a boxing-match, and to a—a little party—afterwards, with Nick Cluett the fighter."
Somewhat to Daisy's surprise, Jean seemed to look less severe as she heard the host of the "little party" named.
"Well," she said, after a moment, "I was just twa minds about lockin' ye in, lassie, and sending they people aboot their business; but if it's Nicky Cluett ye're gaun with, ye'll tak' no harm—that is, unless ye encourage him, an' then ye'll tak' no end o' harm, and it'll serve ye right. My cousin Jock Lauder—Baby Jock, they call him—kens Nick weel."
"Is Baby Jock your cousin?" said Daisy, "why, I had a dance with him last night, out at the park.
"Is that so, then?" Jean leaned forward with interest. "Jock's a fighter too, although he'd never let on, withoot ye speir him direct.... Well, gae along, then, to your pairty—but keep a sharp eye on yon person with the scentit breath. I'd no trusthimas far as I could cast him."
The long red automobile that had been waiting near the sidewalk outside the Harrison gateway, answered to the electric starter with a tigerish snore and, as the clutch was thrown on, bore out the feline similitude with a four-yard leap that brought it diagonally out into rapid motion down the street.
"Any good with the mitts?" asked Mr. Masterman jocularly, turning toward Daisy his globular face with its lightish eyebrows and large flexible lips, that rolled and curled like leaf-edges with perennial relish of the faculty of speech.
"Aw, talk sense, Bob," smoothly intervened Miss Stella Yockley—she whom Jean had described as "a thick-legged wench that rolls her eyes aboot"—"Miss Nixon's alady—can't you see! A perfect lady—huh?" And, as though to imply that this was a joke, from which Mr. Masterman was excluded, Miss Yockley, under cover of a hand raised to dab at her front hair, winked at Daisy.
Daisy responded with a twinkling, half-smiling, non-committal look, and then turned her face streetward. The sensation of the swift ride along the thoroughfare, with its glittering electric lamps, its traffic roar, and its trampling—these influences, and the anticipation of risk in the coming "little party" at an unnamed place, with men of untested tendencies, had strung the girl's nerves to a pleasant tension of excitement. Talkwould interfere with her enjoyment of the feeling which thrilled her. Besides, Mr. Masterman's face pained Daisy. These were the reasons she chose to watch the sights of the street in preference to talking.
Cutting corners with a lawless brevity after he past the last point policeman, Mr. Masterman finally brought his car to an adroit and easy halt in a line of others before the door of a big theatre. Dismounting, he swung Miss Yockley to the curb. Daisy hopped out of the tonneau without aid. The three passed through the vestibule; and, as they confronted the ticket-taker, Mr. Masterman said, tersely, "Girls is with me, Harry", and the official ogling Daisy a little, stood docilely aside.
A few moments later, Daisy Nixon, entering a curtained way and sitting down alongside Miss Yockley on green plush seats in the lower right-hand box, had her first look at a stage set for a boxing match.
"What are the ropes for?" she said to Miss Yockley, as she stared across the bare stage floor, with its Spartan garniture—the hempen square, the backless wooden stools facing each other diagonally, the battered water-buckets, each with its bobbing sponge.
"You can search me, honey," absently returned Miss Stella; who was too busy searching, with the eyes that "rolled aboot", for acquaintancesamong the audience, to pay much attention, either to her "kid" companion or to the squared "ring" which she had, as it were, seen a hundred times but never looked at. Miss Yockley had always been too much occupied with observing the human and masculine element in "fights", to notice the paraphernalia.
Continuing to watch the stage with a kind of unexplainable fascination, Daisy Nixon presently had her interest rewarded by the appearance of a slim and agile young man in a sleeveless gymnasium shirt, gray trousers, and canvas shoes, whose coming seemed to be the signal for the surging-in of a crowd from both wings, filling the rows of empty chairs at the ringside. Among this crowd, which included newspaper reporters, moneyed patrons of the boxing bouts, and near friends or relatives of those who were to take part in the matches of the evening, Daisy soon picked out the large ingratiating face of Mr. Masterman.
When her eyes next turned toward the fighting ring, she saw that two youths in trunk tights had in the interval wriggled through the ropes and seated themselves on the chairs or stools that faced each other at diagonally opposite corners of the enclosure. The gray-trousered young man stepped to that side of the roped arena next the orchestra-pit and, lifting to the audience a faceon which the nose had been, by some mishap of the near or remote past, forever pushed sidewise, so that it seemed to recline on the left cheek, said, laconic and loud:
"Ladhies and gentlemen, th' firsth bout on this evenink's programme it will be four two-minutth rounts between Spider Clausewitz—on my right—and Younk Kelly—on my left."
Spider Clausewitz—he on the speaker's right—did not hear the announcement. His chief interest at the moment was in sizing up the pugilistic bargain in the opposite corner with shrewd Semitic slits of eyes. One end of his mouth was tilted up in a calculating way to meet the nostril. His gloves were folded across his waistband; his lean bare back convexed in a negligent arch. If he did not win, he would at least see that he did not lose. He knew that he was master of the situation sufficiently to guarantee that; so Spider's mind was easy.
So, too, in fact was the mind behind Young Kelly's broad-staring, half-grinning, Hibernian countenance. His confidence was expressed in an attitude which was the exact opposite of Spider's. He sat so aggressively erect that his back was concave. His eyes were round and unwinking as those of a young bantam. His pose suggested that he was, as it were, just waiting to be turned loose.
It seemed but a moment after the announcer—who was also the referee—finished his proclamation, till Daisy, with the excitement of the new spectator, saw the two fighting "comers" tearing into each other in the middle of the roped enclosure in a way that made the audience shout with glee. Young Kelly, his black eyes like beads, was giving every ounce of vigor he had to the combat. Clausewitz, though fighting back smartly to avoid giving away anything on points, was more careful in his expenditure of energy. Daisy found herself mentally taking sides with the Irish boy; and it was therefore with delight that presently she saw Spider's head imprisoned tightly in the robust loop of Young Kelly's arm. But Kelly, after playfully threatening the captured head with his glove, turned the Spider loose again. The audience whooped.
Presently, however, Clausewitz also had a chance to show courtesy and, with instinctive shrewdness seized it. A sudden nausea, resulting from some chance blow along the nerve-centres of the spine, unexpectedly made Kelly wilt visibly. His face turned pale-greenish. Perspiration-beads showed across his chest and forehead. His guarding arm wabbled.
Clausewitz saw the situation at a glance. He could have finished his opponent in a second with a stiff blow to the jaw-point. But such a winwould gain him nothing in the goodwill of the public, for it was obvious to all those in the seats near the ring that Kelly was sick and practically defenceless.
It is by policy as much as by prowess that the young pugilist climbs to the top. So Spider, cautiously dropping his guard, slid an arm about Kelly and escorted him ostentatiously to the stool in the corner of the roped square. Again the audience cheered.
"Well," said Daisy, clapping her hands with the rest of the spectators as she turned to Miss Yockley, "the lad wasn't mean, was he, after all."
"He's one wise kid," said Miss Stella, yawning. "I wish they's quit killin' time with stuff like that, though, an' call on the big bout. Wait till you see Nicky Cluett at work. Wait till you see Nicky Cluett at work! He's offering a thousand dollars to-night to anybody that will out-point him in four rounds. This is one time, honey, when you and I are billed to see some fun—more farce-comedy than fightin' though—when these half-baked fighters comes after Nick's money."
Miss Yockley's wish was not long in being gratified. The second "preliminary" was less than one round in duration, and afforded Daisy, for the first time in her life, that rather sickening spectacle of a strong man sprawled half-unconscious over the straining ropes of a ring, tryingvainly to rise to his feet, while another waited with tensed body to strike him down again as soon as his weak knees left the sawdust floor in their slow painful uprising.
"Aw, get the ambulance," fanned Miss Yockley loudly, chewing gum. "That referee can't count past 8."
"What's the matter with that poor man?" said Daisy, all sympathy.
"Oh, nothin'," said Miss Stella. "Wants to have a little sleep, I guess. Oh—at last!"
For the referee, concluding his measured count to 10 while the fallen man still rested on hand and knee, had turned brusquely, caught the gloved hand of the other fighter, and thrust it up in the air in token of a win.
"O' course he's the winner," snorted Miss Daisy's companion; "they should never have took that other fellow away from his sandwich job. He can't stand up without he's got a couple of sign-boards to brace him.... But look, honey; here's our Nicky. Always inspects the ring like that, so's the boy that goes down in front of him within the first ten seconds after Nick gets in action, can't claim he slipped on a banana peel."
Daisy withdrew her eyes from their sympathetic following of the limp victim of the second preliminary bout, as the latter's seconds, ashoulder under each of his armpits, escorted him wabblingly back into the wings.
As she looked again at the roped square, she saw that in the interval there had hopped into the enclosure her partner of the dance in the park pavilion, Nick Cluett, a boxer of the kind that is born and not made. Hither and thither, slim and lithe in his gay-colored bath-robe, he moved—stamping the floor here and there with a testing heel, trying the tautness of the ropes, saying nothing, but noticing everything.
"They can't never put nothin' over on Nicky," commented Miss Yockley, more than generous with her negatives when she wanted to be emphatic. "They used to lay traps for him, when they seen how he was comin' on in the boxing game—for some of these here so-called 'sports' is the meanest, trickiest skates this side of the Hot Place. But after Nick showed up a couple o' them kind of low-down promoters, by bawling them out right in front of the audience, so's everybody could get a line on them, they let up on their monkey-work. They don't try nothin' now; but Nick, he always gives everything the onct-over, to be on the safe side."
Apparently everything was in order in the present case; for Cluett, his hands thrust in the pockets of his bath-robe, stepped to the centre of the roped space to speak to the referee and toMasterman, his manager. Facing him, on the referee's left, stood the man who was to be his first opponent—a stocky fellow, whose calves, showing underneath the frayed edge of the old dressing-gown he wore, were more those of a football-player than a boxer.
"Nothin' but a big ox," said Miss Yockley, with a sniff; "Nick'll play with him a little, and then push him over. The gink will have some bother fallin' down, with them size feet. Maybe he'll go to sleep standin' up. Funny things happens in the ring sometimes, kiddo."
In a moment or two, the fighters stepped back to their corners, threw off their wraps, and stood forth in abbreviated trunks. It was seen that the build of Cluett's opponent bore out the promise of his calves. He was heavy-muscled and broad of chest; thick-necked, and with a hard-looking chin that moved to the chewing of gum.
About the physique of Cluett himself, as he stood at ease, his arms lightly hanging, there was nothing remarkable, except that one shoulder seemed to be a little lower than the other. His muscles flowed along his limbs instead of standing out in knots and ridges. Standing unposed, with his perennial smile and his almost sleepy expression of eye, he looked like a somewhat indolent schoolboy, about to take a dip in a peaceful swimming-pool.
"That big thing over in the other chair will hurt him," said Daisy, anxiously; "why don't they make the big fellow take somebody his own size?"
"Don't talk," said Miss Yockley, briefly, "just sit still and watch. It ain't our Nick that's going to get hurt, honey."
But Daisy exclaimed aloud, and even the confident Miss Yockley herself almost winced, as Hobday, the big man, after a bare touch of Cluett's glove in the customary preliminary handshake, struck upward immediately and without warning. As the quick treacherous upper-cut shot toward Nick's chin, Bob Masterman, who could move with a marvellous quickness for all his avoirdupois, when occasion seemed to demand speed, jumped up from his seat and thrust his head through between the ropes, ready to shout his protest to the referee.
But, before Mr. Masterman made a sound, a glove, at the end of a slim smooth-muscled arm, waved him away with a backward gesture. Nick Cluett, untouched, slid his manager a corner of a smile as he stepped lightly backward, just far enough to be missed by Hobday's left, which followed that gentleman's unsuccessful right in a brisk second try for Cluett's jaw-point. Nick's guard was languidly low, and on his face was an almost dreamy look which a group of Hobday'sbackers in the front orchestra seats evidently took for an expression of daze; for, "Finish him, Jim! He's all yours, boy!" they yelled lustily.
Bob Masterman stole a look at Cluett's face. In the centre of the never-changing smile, he saw the mouth-corner drawn up in a dry, calculating way. The manager's momentary flicker of anxiety passed. He leaned back, folded his arms, grinned, and waited.
Jim Hobday grew more aggressive every moment. The round was three-quarters over, and he had practically had the ring to himself, except for a gliding thing like a shadow, which eluded his fists by so little each time he swung that at every lunge he grew more encouraged, although he hit nothing.
"Come on—fight!" he growled, bull-like.
Mr. Cluett's smile deepened a little, and his lips moved. "Say when," were the words they framed.
"When?—why, right now!" roared Hobday, loud enough for the group of his backers to hear.
Mr. Cluett obeyed immediately. It was difficult for the eye to register the movement he made; but to those at the vantage-point of the ringside, it looked as though he doubled under Hobday's guard and then straightened up, all in one movement like a snake striking.
Hobday's knees were seen to sag. His glovesdropped on Cluett's shoulders, half as though caressing his opponent, then slipped limply off. His whole heavy body collapsed, like a wet mattress.
"Ouch!" said Miss Yockley, feeling her chin. Then, glancing sidewise at Daisy, she commented, "Well, kid, I suppose you feel easier now, eh?"
"W-what did he do to him?" said Daisy, a little breathlessly; mixing her pronouns, in her marvelling.
"Oh, nothing," said Miss Yockley, ironically, "nothing at all. Only sent that big bovalapus off to Dreamland, on a through ticket, with one swipe. That's all!"
After Mr. Hobday, in an only partially recovered state, had been removed, and the hubbub of comment among his backers in the orchestra seats had subsided, there came a lull. Mr. Cluett sat in his chair in the corner of the ring, nodding and occasionally replying briefly to some remark made by the chatting group that surrounded him. From back in the wings came presently the sound of argument and protest; and, after a moment, a hale person in striped trunks shot into view as though he had been playfully pushed. With one sheepish glance toward the audience, however, he turned about and beat a retreat.
"You see," explained Miss Yockley, to Daisy, "they put their best man up first; and now thatthe others has seen what Nick done to him, you couldn't coax 'em into the ring with old cheese. It looks to me as though everything's all over for to-night. Wait, though—here comes the spieler. Let's hear what he has to say; then we'll go around and see how soon Bob and Nick will be ready to come away."
"Ladhies and gentlemen," said the announcer, coming to the edge of the ring, "I regret to announct that, owing to the factth that we are unable to secure anodther oppon't in answer to Champeen Cluetth's challenge to any fighter of any weighth—"
At this point the speaker paused. A young man, in an automobile dust-coat, unbuttoned—showing that he was in evening dress and had evidently just arrived from some dance or other function—had hopped into the ring and tapped the announcer briskly on the arm to attract his attention. For a moment, the two held rapid conversation; then the young man in evening dress slipped under the ropes and disappeared again into the wings. The announcer, stepping to the very front of the stage and raising his voice so that he might be heard above the creakings of dispersal which already sounded in galleries and pit, said:
"If there are any presentth who may wish to remain a little longer, I am gladdh to be able to say that a certaint young man-about-town hasagreed to meet the champeen in a boutth of four three-minutth rounts. As the stranger wishes his identity to be concealedh—for reasons of his own—he will appear in the ringk masked."
"Masked!" commented Miss Stella Yockley, "now, what's this they're trying to spring on us, I wonder. Well, anyway, they can't put nothin' over on Nick. He's in training to-night, and the Devil himself couldn't trim Nicky Cluett in four rounds. There ain't a fighter living could do it—no, sir, I don't care who he is." And with these words Miss Stella cast a devoted glance toward the corner of the ring where Mr. Cluett, still chatting unconcernedly, had drawn his bathrobe over his shoulders as a sign to the unknown to hurry up, if he wanted a chance to land a "haymaker" on a fighter whose time was money.
He had not long to wait. A young white-limbed fellow, with a pompadour of stiff hair rising above the black mask that covered him from mid-forehead to just above his mouth, vaulted over the ropes into the ring, and took the stool in the opposite corner to that in which Cluett stood. There was something about the lines of the stranger's mouth and chin that seemed to Daisy vaguely familiar.
After vainly trying to remember where she had seen similar features before, the girl turned hereyes toward the corner where Cluett had just sat down on the stool.
The champion, his elbows on his knees and his head leaning forward in its customary attitude, was looking at his latest opponent with a certain interest. Whether it was that the mask piqued his curiosity, or that there was something in the build and agility of the unknown which indexed prowess, was not evident to Daisy; but Miss Yockley murmured, half to herself:
"Sa-ay! Watch Nicky prick up his ears. He sees something—I don't know what it is, but I know he sees it."
As the gong sounded for the first round and the two got up from their stools, it was evident to the professional eye that Cluett's new opponent was, at any rate, more nearly his equal than the ill-fortuned Mr. Hobday.
"Say!" Miss Yockley's tone thrilled with reluctant admiration, "did you notice the footwork of that boy?... No, you don't, Mr. Mask.... Yes, you did, too! Sa-ay, you better watch that lad, Nicky Cluett!"
The last three ejaculations as the masked fighter tried for the head and—marvel of marvels to Cluett's admirers!—landed. Landed lightly; but landed, nevertheless.
As this happened, there came a hush of conversation all over the house. From boxes andorchestra circle, and gallery and balcony there sounded, as it were, one simultaneous creak as the audience leaned forward in their seats.
Nick Cluett was still smiling the smile that had never been known to leave his face, even in sleep. But, otherwise, his whole demeanor had changed. His arms, instead of swinging careless and indolently half-crooked, at his sides, were raised in his low impassable guard. His back, straight from hips to shoulder, leaned a little forward. The head was bent in his customary fighting pose, forehead out and chin in.
"'Watch', was what I said," Miss Yockley, gloved hands clasped together with feminine tenseness under her chin, breathed, to everybody in general, "and I hope you're watching, for th' sake of what you'll miss if you ain't."
The champion was following the stranger around the ring. The masked man, with light hissings of his shoes on the canvas floor, backed at exactly the same pace, carefully avoiding corners, seeming to know where he was by instinct and without the necessity of what would have been an instantly-disastrous look over-shoulder. There was neither blow nor feint. Sometimes the gloves of the fighters touched, but the impact was feather-light and without audible sound.
Then Cluett struck. It was not like a blow—it was more like a shot. That is to say, one sawnothing of the travelling fist: merely noticed the effect, in a red which grew between the stranger's lips, until it ran down in a long thin trickle over his bulldoggy chin.
"Gosh all jew's-harps!" monologued the tautened Miss Yockley, who did not seem gratified, "Nick missed him. That was meant for the point of the jaw. Would have been a K. O., too, if it had gone where it was looking. But ou-wouch!"
This last as the masked man's shoulders, gleaming white under the electric arcs, see-sawed flashingly. With apparently no visible reason for the movement, Nick Cluett's head rocked. The gong sounded, closing Round One.
"Jiminy!" Miss Stella said, "watch Bob!"
For Mr. Masterman was rushing to and fro, as the saying goes, "like a hen on a hot griddle". Talking and gesticulating to the referee—dashing over and shaking his fist in the face of the masked man who leaned back calmly in his stool while his seconds sponged his mouth—then hurrying back and whispering like a soda fountain in the ear of the champion, who reclined against the ropes that stretched behind his seat, restoring himself by deep inhalations and smiling crookedly at his manager's ecstasy of anxiety.
"That mask has got to come off!" Bob Masterman yelled, dashing over again to the referee, "or out of this comes my man. He can fight anythingwith a face on, but he ain't used to pounding away at a mask."
"Why don't you mask your man, then?" demanded one of the stranger's seconds, who both also wore masks, one red, one black; "That will even things."
"Mask nothing," grunted the monosyllabic Mr. Cluett, sitting up in preparation for the gong; "Beat it, Bob. Keep shirt on. 'M all right."
Round Two commenced with the house, crowded from orchestra pit to gallery, watching in a silence unbroken except for an intermittent creak or cough. Even the light sound of the fighters' shoes on the ring-canvas was audible in seats half-way to the back of the big auditorium. Mr. Masterman, fists clenched in the side-pockets of his coat, feet squared aggressively on the floor, face thrust forward, watched the movements of both men with as much intentness as though he were a kind of auxiliary referee. Miss Yockley, sympathetically reflecting Masterman's moods, had lost her nonchalance. Her mouth half-open; her hands locked together and thrust, knuckles up, under her chin; the whites of her eyes showing in a gawky stare: she watched Cluett let the second round go by with only one light left swing to the neck, countered immediately by the masked man with a lightning right which made Nick shake his head and rub the thumb of his glove across hisnostrils. Neither blow did any noticeable damage.
Just before the gong called the boxers to their feet for Round Three, Nick Cluett, leaning back from the flicking towels, beckoned his manager and whispered in the latter's ear, afterwards giving him a whack on the shoulder with his glove as at the conclusion of a joke. Mr. Masterman was seen by Miss Yockley to brighten, and to resume his seat with something very like a smile.
"Clubs is trumps, huh?" Miss Stella relaxed from her nervousness a little to remark. "Well, all hands is glad it ain't spades, brother."
The climax of Round Three came just at its conclusion, after an exhibition of "footwork" that kept the audience clapping. From sparring at long range, the fighters, as though in simultaneous response to the same idea, jumped in close. Their work was so rapid that only those in the front ringside seats saw the terrific jab, all the power of shoulder and torso behind it, with which Cluett tried for the jaw-point, missed by a hair's-width, and stepped back with blood streaming from a contusion, half-cut, half-bruise, above his eye, where the stranger had countered, rapid as rifle-fire, before he could move out of range.
During the rest between Rounds Three and Four, it became almost necessary for the half-crazed Mr. Masterman to be put out of the ring by main force, as he pushed in, caught Cluett byone arm, and tried, in spite of the expostulation of the referee, the reporters, and those in the adjoining ringside seats, and the grinning resistance of Cluett himself, to haul from the ring the champion whose laurel crown he regarded as now no more than perched precariously on the very edge of Nick's scalp.
"Come on!" he said, tugging redly and furiously; "he won't take off his mask, and this bout should have b'en off two rounds ago. Come on—out you come!"
"Don't make me smile, Bob," observed Mr. Cluett, wryly but tolerantly, as the seconds, working on the cut over his eye, made it smart momentarily with the caustic they were using to stop the blood; "my lips are cracked. Ta-ake it easy. Leggo now—leggo!"
There was no opposing the note in the last word. Mr. Masterman, grumblingly releasing the arm he held, stepped back through the ropes.
"All right," was his final shot; "it's your funeral, Nick."
"There ain't goin' to be no funeral," said Mr. Cluett, "didn't I tell you to keep your shirt on. Have I ever fell down on a bet, th' whole time you've knew me? Have I?"
"Well," retorted his manager, "all I know is, you're pretty near due to lose on points, unless you can make this last round all yours."
Nick Cluett merely turned away his head, having said enough—for him. As the gong sounded for climactic Round Four, both boxers, with the "bluff" of the ring, sprang to meet each other as though it had required ten men apiece to hold them back till the moment came. For all this business of haste, however, their gloves touched warily. A four-round mill is a very short one, even for two ringmasters like Nick and his opponent, to feel out a new antagonist in; and, though each knew points of the other's "style" by now, each knew there was more to uncover and that it would be uncovered in this deciding round. The bout, so far, had been a clean and pretty one; and that the audience had developed no partialities was made evident by the way in which both men were cheered as they worked.
But in this last round it was Cluett who was especially marvellous. Right from the tap of the gong he was the aggressor. Round and round the ring he backed his opponent; giving the stranger never the chance to start, much less to land, a blow. But if the champion's offensive was lightninglike and wonderful, the masked man's guard was no less so. For, though Cluett's glove landed in each case, it landed with its force broken by the elastic and elusive movement of the stranger's head and torso.
"Easy, Nick—easy," spurted Masterman, though his eyes shone; "don't let him play you out, boy." Besides the pride he felt in his man's work, Bob Masterman knew that if Cluett kept this overshadowing gait to the end of the round, he would win hands down on points.
"Soak him, Nicky!" cheered the barometric Miss Yockley, wriggling with delight; "he's ran short o' tricks. He's all yours."
Daisy's sympathies had swung, quite without conscious mental volition, to the side of the masked man, as she saw that he seemed to be losing. Her eyes never left his face, as she watched sympathetically for the spreading red stain that should show broken skin. But, although the stranger's cheek below the black edge of the mask, as well as the sides and even the point of the jaw, were dull red where Cluett had landed—but landed as on something pneumatic—there came no vivider crimson. Instead, Daisy saw come on the lips a smile. The smile was still there when the round ended with the masked man skilfully covering from a shower of taps that, though his guard broke or lightened them, landed as true as the arrows of Locksley. Nor had the smile on the bulldoggy lips faded when, upon Cluett being declared winner of the bout, the stranger, followed by the commending cheers of the crowd, vaulted out of the ring over the ropes, and was gone. Amoment afterwards, there came the great, smooth snarl of a high-powered auto springing from the curb outside.
"Some big bug amateur," observed Miss Yockley, shrewdly, "hence the mask. Must have slipped on his auto-coat over his fightin' togs, to get away that quick. Them seconds with the masks on was likely college chums, or something. But, O teaberries! didn't he cover up from our Nicky though! I never saw a man could do like that before.... Come on, now, kid: let's get out in our car and wait for the boys. There's something," Miss Stella added volubly, as she rose, "that I don't quite understand, about that last round. Didn't seem as if the other man was trying; he never started one punch. Can't get nothin' out of Nicky on it—he's too close-mouthed. But Bob'll tell us."
It was not long after the two reached the automobile, standing long and alert by the curb where Mr. Masterman and Daisy and Miss Yockley had left it when they entered the theatre, till they saw the two men approaching. Mr. Cluett had just had a shower-bath in one of the dressing-rooms, and his hair showed wet and black around the edges of his cap. He was silent, but the perennial smile was in its place. There was not a bruise visible to Daisy, except the slight skin-break above his eyebrow. She scrutinized the champion witha new, but not exactly intensified interest, as he slipped into the tonneau beside her.
"Well," he said, taking off his cap and running his fingers through his thick damp hair; "how's our little one? All here?"
Mr. Masterman, getting in by Miss Yockley on the front seat, swung his head around as he took the wheel.
"Some boy with the mitts—eh, what?" he grinned at Daisy. Miss Yockley caught the speaker by the ear, and promptly turned him eyes front.
"I'mhere," she said, as she extracted a fresh piece of gum out of her handbag, "notthere. Now, who's this buck with the Hallowe'en fixings, Bob?"
"I know," said Mr. Masterman, "but I'm ferbid to say."
"Well," observed Miss Yockley, as her teeth industriously kneaded her new slice of gum, "he pretty near threw a monkey-wrench into our machinery, whoever he is. Bar all masked fighters after this, is my little word of advice to you boys. Eatin' snowballs ain't fattening, and it wouldn't even be nice for a change.... But who was he, Bob? Come o-on; we're all friends here."
Mr. Masterman shook his head. But, at the same time, the eyelid next Miss Stella, answering a brief contraction of Bob Masterman's cheek,swiftly closed and opened in a movement that the others did not see.
"Precisely, brother," acknowledged Miss Yockley; then, turning toward the two in the tonneau, with her plump arm laid along the back of the seat, she said, with a rapid change of subject;
"Here's a couple that ain't speakin', Bob. What does a fellow do in a case like that?"
"Run for the Doctor," suggested Mr. Masterman, over his shoulder. "Where do you want to go, Nick?"
"Home, James," said Mr. Cluett. Then, as he roused himself from an attack of pensiveness, during which he had been making little unconscious passes with his arms, accompanied by swift light jerks of the shoulders he added thoughtfully, "Some class to that fellow, Bob."
"Class is right," said Mr. Masterman; "but no more masks for us, boy. Never again."
"Oh, I don't know," pondered Nick Cluett; "I'd fight him again, mask and all, just to learn something about that style of guard he's got. Fightin' them other dubs will never get me anywhere: it's too much like bowling."
After turning a few corners, the car was halted near a big seven-story, midtown block, the ground floor of which was occupied by a sporting goods store on one side, and a great bright-windowed restaurant on the other.
"Hail, hail, the gang's all here!" said Mr. Masterman, bustlingly, clicking open the fore and tonneau doors of the automobile; "everybody change!"
"Order up a little supper, Bob, after you run the car in," said Nick Cluett as, leaving Masterman to take the car to the garage at the back, he followed the girls to the elevator entrance.
The elevator rose slowly. Daisy, standing with her arm through that of the nonchalant Miss Yockley, felt her nerves tauten as though they were being wound with a key. Her wits sharpened automatically to meet the situation into which her daring had projected her. The rapid, virile beat of her blood made her tingle pleasantly, and brought a color into her cheeks that caused the ever-observant Miss Stella to remark, as they stepped out of the elevator:
"Say, kid, we got to get a picture of you."
Cluett thrust a key into the shining brass lock of a door halfway along the corridor; swung it open; and, glancing inscrutably sidewise at Daisy, motioned inward with his hand. Daisy, following close on Miss Yockley's heels, found herself in an apartment with two wall-beds that, hooked up into place, showed as nothing but a pair of full-length mirrors, with dressing-brackets at either side that served as legs when the beds were let down. Gus, the janitor, had tidied the place.Canvas shoes and sweaters had been gathered into the clothes-closet. The big porcelain tub in the bathroom had been polished until it shone white and clean. The green carpet had been gone over with a vacuum cleaner. The "pillow" gloves of boxing practice had been arrayed in an orderly manner on the top of the chiffonier.
The room was a large one, with two big airy windows. On the walls, kalsomined in light green, were pictures of fighters of all weights; a wire card-rack with photographs of girls; and prints, some framed and some unframed, of the "September Morn" type. An open door showed an inner apartment, with red burlap, plate-rail, round dining-table, and buffet; and beyond this was a small kitchen, into which Miss Yockley, who had unpinned and tossed aside her hat, bustled, and lit the gas under a copper water-kettle. Almost simultaneously, a bump came at the hall-door, and a grinning restaurant-waiter entered with a huge nickeled tray, whose savory-smelling victuals were hidden under a white linen cover.
"Right here, George!" sirened Miss Stella, posting herself by a side-table in the dining-room.
On the heels of the "little supper" came Bob Masterman, who shook a finger playfully at Daisy as he slammed the door on the vanishing waiter and cast his hat into a corner.
"This way for yours, Bob," came MissYockley's voice, above the clatter of silver and bump of dishes laid out on a table-cloth; "come along, and get your coat off, and massacree these chickens. Can't you see you ain't wanted in there? You need a house to fall on you, you do!"
Mr. Masterman sighed like a typhoon, but obediently passed into the dining-room: pausing, ere he closed the door after him, to stick his face through the aperture and close an eye at Daisy.
"Beat it, Bob," said Mr. Cluett, absently.
"I guess I'll go and help," said Daisy, looking brightly cornerwise at her companion, who still seemed to have the fight on his mind. Nick Cluett at this, came out of his half-reverie and, crossing the room, sat down beside Daisy. He looked at her a moment in a queer way; then put out a strong hand, with black hair growing along the finger-sinews, and laid it on hers. Daisy noticed that the middle knuckle looked purplish.
"Well, m' little girl," he said, "how goes it?"
"What's happened your hand?" said Daisy; putting her head on one side, softly touching the discolored knuckle, then looking at him through down-held lashes.
Cluett glanced down casually. "Oh, nothing," he said, "just a little accident. But you ain't told me howyouare, yet."
"Oh, I—I'm sick in bed," said Daisy, putting her free hand up to her face, and bringing twodancing irises to bear on Mr. Cluett through the fingers of it.
"You're a little devil," commented Mr. Cluett, inching over and putting his arm around her. Daisy's eyes, fairly coruscating with coquetry and resource, flashed down at the hand that pressed her waist. First she pretended to look at it from one angle; then from another.
"I don't like the looks of it," she said, "take it away."
"Do you mean that?" said Nick Cluett. The dark face, with its queer stationary smile and its eyes full of a warming light, came close to hers. Daisy waited dimpling till the rough cheek, bluish with its day's growth of stiff hair-stubble, almost touched her ear. Then, exploding into light quick action, she cast away the encircling arm and hopped to her feet.
"I'm going to help get the supper," she said; and, before Nick Cluett could stop her, whisked to the dining-room door and flung it open.
"What's bust loose?" said Miss Yockley, who was making coffee.
"Frisky little thing, you!" observed Mr. Masterman, rolling up his sporting paper, and playfully threatening Daisy with it.
"Turn off the gas, Bob," commanded Miss Stella, "and don't have so much to say. Come along, Nicky. Supper's on."