Harold MacGrath

“ Willie grinned and sent the ball with such violence against the side of the barn that Sands muffed the rebound and had to step off the cement into the soggy soil to recover.
“How's that, Count?” jeered Willie.
Willie no longer called the other Dope. He applied military and noble titles, because of the bookish tendencies of his baiter. Singularly enough, these jeering epithets pleased Dope and were one of the two things that stirred him to smiles. The other was Jenny. If he saw her coming down the road, half a mile away, he smiled.
No man ever wished to be sublime for his own sake. ”

“ He stood up because the act was a part of his inheritance
“No wind any more.”
“That'll come back,” said Jenny. “Johnny White—is that your real name?”
“You don't belong to this camp,” Jenny pursued. “You're not the sort who let pugilists batter them about.”
“I'm going to be, for a while. But you don't belong, either.”
Jenny laughed. “Oh, yes, I do. Killian's my uncle, and I adore him. Let the boys understand you, and they're as good as any. My uncle knows men, and only the right sort ever step inside this camp.” ”

“ It was Jenny, sobbing
“Jenny, what's the matter?”
“Why, Dope, is that you?”
“What's he been sayin' to yuh? I'll croak him!”
“What are you talking about? Croak whom?”
“White.”
“You're crazy! White hasn't said anything to me. Why should he? I'm just blue. Women are fools sometimes. The village lets me teach their children, but it ignores me otherwise; and I grow very lonely.” ”

“ I'm a school-teacher, and he's the son of a rich man.”
“What t'ell's that got to do wit' it—if yuh took a shine?”
“Dope, I would never marry a man who was at odds with his family. I might become an obstacle, a barrier between him and the reconciliation; and in the end he would turn about and hate me. They think differently in that world than we do in ours, Dope. I'm the niece of a man—and I love him!—who manages prize-fighters. We are outcasts; even the village knows it and acts accordingly. So be it. There will always be children to teach. ”

“ SHE had laughed—the woman he had spent his love and money on. Laughed, when Gorham had knocked him down in the Ritz supper-room; laughed, when he had got up and lunged at Gorham, only to be knocked down again; laughed, with the emerald bracelet he had given her flashing on her white wrist. And he hadn't understood until he awoke in a police cell the next morning, where he had been haled on the charge of drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Played him for the poor fool he was, and all the while in cahoots with that shyster broker Gorham!
The Great White Way; jazz and liquor and show-girls! ”

“ He said he'd be at the Ritz with the mate to the punch he'd given me before.”
“Let's go!” cried the jubilant Dope. “Why, they's nothin' to it. One punch'll send him to the hospital. Yea, bo!”
As he later entered the Ritz supper-room at young Bromley's heels, Dope was conscious of the same thrill that had tingled him years ago, when, as a newsie, he had stolen into his first prize-fight up in Harlem
Bromley paused inside the threshold of the supper-room, his eye roving. Dope saw his jaw harden, and knew that the next act would be a call for the police. But the unexpected happened. ”

“ In two weeks' time you'll like everybody or you'll hate everybody.”
“I don't believe I shall hate you.”
“You haven't got to hate or like me. I'm in a ringside seat and don't count.”
She was like no other girl he had ever known, either in life or in books. She did not belong to the world in which he had formerly moved; she did not belong to the world he had but recently left. Had she been of either, his interest would have remained unstirred. Neither was she what he would have designated as middle-class. He was conscious of astonishment; he could not label her. ”

“ Should he tell Jenny who White was—the son of Bromley, the millionaire railroad builder? - For Killian's little maneuver—the casual destruction of the identifying newspaper clipping—had not hoodwinked Dope in the least. He had seen this boy more than once at the ringside, togged out in “soup-and-fish”"—the National Sporting Club stuff. A millionaire's son, booted out of house and home for a row in a fashionable restaurant that had landed him in jail, who never had earned a dollar in his life, who had chased around with Broadway Lizzies until the coin gave out. ”

“ No man or woman shall make a fool of me and get away with it. Will you hold the bucket?”
“Believe me, Aloysius—bucket, bell an' sponge !”
FOR it flashed into Dope's head that this poor boob was going to walk straight into the same mess he had walked into in the spring. There would be general rough-house, jail and another newspaper yarn. That would cure Jenny, by and large. Once Jenny might forgive; but never a repeat. Dope decided to leave no effort untried to bring about this debacle. The old life again, with Jenny all to himself.
“Yuh sure o' findin' your man?” ”

“ There is always something deadly in madness controlled. Never in all his life had he heard such baitings as Killian gave the men; and presently he understood the meaning; the boys knew that Killian was trying to make them lose their tempers, and that they weren't to be caught.
JUNE moved on. Jenny's school closed for the vacation months. At some time during the day White usually found himself with the girl—in the woodshed with the puppies, or on the porch, talking books. ”

“ Until now not a man had appeared to Jenny other than just one of the species. But this young fellow who called himself White and was somebody else was as different from the familiar breed as Jenny was different from all the other women Dope had ever known. ”

“ It'll make Jenny happy to know that you'll come when the weddin' takes place.”
“Does she understand that she wont be marrying a single dollar of the Bromley money?”
Dope laughed. “Jenny aint no gold-digger; she's a school-teacher.”
“Who is she?”
“Killian's niece; an' he's got all kinds o coin an' nobody to leave it to but Jenny. She's the kind that wouldn't marry your son if there was a row on. So I comes on my own to ast yuh to bury the hatchet until after the weddin'. Git me right,” said Dope, with a snarl. “I hates your son like poison-ivy.” ”

“ I'm Jake Killian's scout.”
“And who might Jake Killian be?”
Dope could scarcely believe his ears. “Yuh never heard o' Jake Killian, the whitest man in the fight game?”
“Ah! So this son of mine is to become a prize-fighter? Well, that's logical. Whisky, women and fists.”
“You're all wrong, Mister. He horned into camp to make a man of himself, an' he done it. Took a lickin' every day for three months; an' now he can give an' take wit' Sands. Git that? Sands!”
BROMLEY was becoming deeply interested. The undercurrent of truculence in a man who should be whining puzzled him
“Sit down. ”

“ So it is with human envelopes; the gold lies within the shabby Of course there will sometimes be a beautiful envelope with a beautiful content; but in this noisy jungle of ours, they are white orchids.
Certainly, upon seeing Jimmy Conway, alias Dope, for the first time, your initial thought would be: I should not care to meet that chap after dark!
Jake Killian trained prize-fighters and managed them. His camp was in the foothills of the Adirondacks. He believed in training his man so far from New York that junkets were impossible. ”

“ The camp consisted of a comfortable frame house on one side of the road, and a roomy barn on the other. This barn had been converted into a gymnasium, the stalls having been made over into bedrooms, where the handlers and pork-and-beaners slept.
Dope's true patronymic was unknown to most of those who knew him. He was called Dope because he was a peripatetic World's Almanac on all matters of fistiana. Killian fed and clothed him and gave him a little money from time to. time. Whenever Sands or Donlin was matched with some comparatively unknown scrapper, Killian consulted Dope. ”

“ Many a time, when the house was deserted, Dope would go out to the woodshed and commune with Minnie the Airedale.
“Helluva world, eh, Minnie? You wit' no weddin'-ring an' me wit' a face 'at'd stop a sun-dial. What's the big idea, huh? Sure, them's fine pups; take it f'm me. They's thoroughbreds, an' I'm a mongrel. F'r all I know, I'm an Irish-Wop, out of a Senegambian. My ol' man an' woman—don't know who they was. Say, Minnie, come across. Was it that big redheaded son-of-a-gun f'm the millionaire's camp? ”

“ Minnie was Killian's pet Airedale.
“Six? Good heavens! Was the poor thing alone?”
“Naw. I heard her yelpin' an' hiked aroun' to the woodshed. They looks like a lot o' caterpillars.”
Jenny flew down the side-path and vanished around the rear of the house.
“Gee!” said Dope, wiping his forehead. “Can yuh beat it? I was a helluva midwife. Gee! Kinda hurts to see a dawg suffer an' not doin' nothin' for it.”
White held out his hand. “Will you shake?”
“What's the big idea?” asked Dope, hardening up again.
“I can always like a man who likes dogs.”
Dope felt hypnotized. ”

“ By the window was the small table, and at this Killian, Sands and Donlin seated themselves. White indifferently noticed a vacant chair.
Supper consisted of prime beefsteak, baked potatoes, spinach bran muffins and coffee. There was rich milk if you wanted it. White could not remember of having ever tasted steak so good. He had a juicy bit impaled upon his fork and on the way to his eager mouth, when the fork paused in midair—Jenny Killian came in and sat down in the empty chair.
“A young woman in camp?” White whispered to Dope. “Who is she?” ”

“ It's Jenny.”
“Oh, I see. What comic opera—”
“Cut it out,” snapped Dope. “Jenny's none o your Broadway Lizzies. I thought mebbe y'd like to come to the weddin'.”
“What? Wedding! What the devil is he going to support a wife on?” demanded Bromley, getting back on familiar ground again.
“I dunno; but he will.”
“You've more confidence in him than I have.”
“Sure. I know him an' you don't. You jus' handed him the coin an' let it go at that. A guy who c'n turn himself f'm a hooch-hound into a he-man aint gonna wonder where the job's comin' f'm. But I git yuh. ”