Sally began to see daylight.
“Oh, Bugs—Mr. Butler is one of the boxers in this fight that my brother is interested in?”
“That’s right. He’s going up against the lightweight champ. Lew Lucas is the lightweight champ. He’s a bird!”
“Yes?” said Sally. This youth had a way of looking at her with his head cocked on one side as though he expected her to say something.
“Yes, sir!” said the stripling with emphasis. “Lew Lucas is a hot sketch. He used to live on the next street to me,” he added as clinching evidence of his hero’s prowess. “I’ve seen his old mother as close as I am to you. Say, I seen her a hundred times. Is any stiff of a Bugs Butler going to lick a fellow like that?”
“It doesn’t seem likely.”
“You spoke it!” said the lad crisply, striking unsuccessfully at a fly which had settled on the blotting-paper.
There was a pause. Sally started to rise.
“And there’s another thing,” said the office-boy, loath to close the subject. “Can Bugs Butler make a hundred and thirty-five ringside without being weak?”
“It sounds awfully difficult.”
“They say he’s clever.” The expert laughed satirically. “Well, what’s that going to get him? The poor fish can’t punch a hole in a nut-sundae.”
“You don’t seem to like Mr. Butler.”
“Oh, I’ve nothing against him,” said the office-boy magnanimously. “I’m only saying he’s no licence to be mixing it with Lew Lucas.”
Sally got up. Absorbing as this chat on current form was, more important matters claimed her attention.
“How shall I find my brother when I get to White Plains?” she asked.
“Oh, anybody’ll show you the way to the training-camp. If you hurry, there’s a train you can make now.”
“Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.”
He opened the door for her with an old-world politeness which disuse had rendered a little rusty: then, with an air of getting back to business after a pleasant but frivolous interlude, he took up the paperweights once more and placed the ruler with nice care on his upturned chin.
II
Fillmore heaved a sigh of relief and began to sidle from the room. It was a large room, half barn, half gymnasium. Athletic appliances of various kinds hung on the walls and in the middle there was a wide roped-off space, around which a small crowd had distributed itself with an air of expectancy. This is a commercial age, and the days when a prominent pugilist’s training activities used to be hidden from the public gaze are over. Today, if the public can lay its hands on fifty cents, it may come and gaze its fill. This afternoon, plutocrats to the number of about forty had assembled, though not all of these, to the regret of Mr. Lester Burrowes, the manager of the eminent Bugs Butler, had parted with solid coin. Many of those present were newspaper representatives and on the free list—writers who would polish up Mr. Butler’s somewhat crude prognostications as to what he proposed to do to Mr. Lew Lucas, and would report him as saying, “I am in really superb condition and feel little apprehension of the issue,” and artists who would depict him in a state of semi-nudity with feet several sizes too large for any man.
The reason for Fillmore’s relief was that Mr. Burrowes, who was a great talker and had buttonholed him a quarter of an hour ago, had at last had his attention distracted elsewhere, and had gone off to investigate some matter that called for his personal handling, leaving Fillmore free to slide away to the hotel and get a bite to eat, which he sorely needed. The zeal which had brought him to the training-camp to inspect the final day of Mr. Butler’s preparation—for the fight was to take place on the morrow—had been so great that he had omitted to lunch before leaving New York.
So Fillmore made thankfully for the door. And it was at the door that he encountered Sally. He was looking over his shoulder at the moment, and was not aware of her presence till she spoke.
“Hullo, Fillmore!”
Sally had spoken softly, but a dynamite explosion could not have shattered her brother’s composure with more completeness. In the leaping twist which brought him facing her, he rose a clear three inches from the floor. He had a confused sensation, as though his nervous system had been stirred up with a pole. He struggled for breath and moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue, staring at her continuously during the process.
Great men, in their moments of weakness, are to be pitied rather than scorned. If ever a man had an excuse for leaping like a young ram, Fillmore had it. He had left Sally not much more than a week ago in England, in Shropshire, at Monk’s Crofton. She had said nothing of any intention on her part of leaving the country, the county, or the house. Yet here she was, in Bugs Butler’s training-camp at White Plains, in the State of New York, speaking softly in his ear without even going through the preliminary of tapping him on the shoulder to advertise her presence. No wonder that Fillmore was startled. And no wonder that, as he adjusted his faculties to the situation, there crept upon him a chill apprehension.
For Fillmore had not been blind to the significance of that invitation to Monk’s Crofton. Nowadays your wooer does not formally approach a girl’s nearest relative and ask permission to pay his addresses; but, when he invites her and that nearest relative to his country home and collects all the rest of the family to meet her, the thing may be said to have advanced beyond the realms of mere speculation. Shrewdly Fillmore had deduced that Bruce Carmyle was in
