“Sally!” A croaking whisper was the best he could achieve. “What … what … ?”
“Did I startle you? I’m sorry.”
“What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at Monk’s Crofton?”
Sally glanced past him at the ring and the crowd around it.
“I decided I wanted to get back to America. Circumstances arose which made it pleasanter to leave Monk’s Crofton.”
“Do you mean to say … ?”
“Yes. Don’t let’s talk about it.”
“Do you mean to say,” persisted Fillmore, “that Carmyle proposed to you and you turned him down?”
Sally flushed.
“I don’t think it’s particularly nice to talk about that sort of thing, but—yes.”
A feeling of desolation overcame Fillmore. That conviction, which saddens us at all times, of the wilful bone-headedness of our fellows swept coldly upon him. Everything had been so perfect, the whole arrangement so ideal, that it had never occurred to him as a possibility that Sally might take it into her head to spoil it by declining to play the part allotted to her. The match was so obviously the best thing that could happen. It was not merely the suitor’s impressive wealth that made him hold this opinion, though it would be idle to deny that the prospect of having a brother-in-lawful claim on the Carmyle bank-balance had cast a rosy glamour over the future as he had envisaged it. He honestly liked and respected the man. He appreciated his quiet and aristocratic reserve. A well-bred fellow, sensible withal, just the sort of husband a girl like Sally needed. And now she had ruined everything. With the capricious perversity which so characterizes her otherwise delightful sex, she had spilled the beans.
“But why?”
“Oh, Fill!” Sally had expected that realization of the facts would produce these symptoms in him, but now that they had presented themselves she was finding them rasping to the nerves. “I should have thought the reason was obvious.”
“You mean you don’t like him?”
“I don’t know whether I do or not. I certainly don’t like him enough to marry him.”
“He’s a darned good fellow.”
“Is he? You say so. I don’t know.”
The imperious desire for bodily sustenance began to compete successfully for Fillmore’s notice with his spiritual anguish.
“Let’s go to the hotel and talk it over. We’ll go to the hotel and I’ll give you something to eat.”
“I don’t want anything to eat, thanks.”
“You don’t want anything to eat?” said Fillmore incredulously. He supposed in a vague sort of way that there were eccentric people of this sort, but it was hard to realize that he had met one of them. “I’m starving.”
“Well, run along then.”
“Yes, but I want to talk …”
He was not the only person who wanted to talk. At the moment a small man of sporting exterior hurried up. He wore what his tailor’s advertisements would have called a “nobby” suit of checked tweed and—in defiance of popular prejudice—a brown bowler hat. Mr. Lester Burrowes, having dealt with the business which had interrupted their conversation a few minutes before, was anxious to resume his remarks on the subject of the supreme excellence in every respect of his young charge.
“Say, Mr. Nicholas, you ain’t goin’? Bugs is just getting ready to spar.”
He glanced inquiringly at Sally.
“My sister—Mr. Burrowes,” said Fillmore faintly. “Mr. Burrowes is Bugs Butler’s manager.”
“How do you do?” said Sally.
“Pleased to meecher,” said Mr. Burrowes. “Say …”
“I was just going to the hotel to get something to eat,” said Fillmore.
Mr. Burrowes clutched at his coat-button with a swoop, and held him with a glittering eye.
“Yes, but, say, before-you-go-lemme-tell-ya-somef’n. You’ve never seen this boy of mine, not when he was feeling right. Believe me, he’s there! He’s a wizard. He’s a Hindu! Say, he’s been practising up a left shift that …”
Fillmore’s eye met Sally’s wanly, and she pitied him. Presently she would require him to explain to her how he had dared to dismiss Ginger from his employment—and make that explanation a good one: but in the meantime she remembered that he was her brother and was suffering.
“He’s the cleverest lightweight,” proceeded Mr. Burrowes fervently, “since Joe Gans. I’m telling you and I know! He …”
“Can he make a hundred and thirty-five ringside without being weak?” asked Sally.
The effect of this simple question on Mr. Burrowes was stupendous. He dropped away from Fillmore’s coat-button like an exhausted bivalve, and his small mouth opened feebly. It was as if a child had suddenly propounded to an eminent mathematician some abstruse problem in the higher algebra. Females who took an interest in boxing had come into Mr. Burrowes’ life before—in his younger days, when he was a famous featherweight, the first of his three wives had been accustomed to sit at the ringside during his contests and urge him in language of the severest technicality to knock opponents’ blocks off—but somehow he had not supposed from her appearance and manner that Sally was one of the elect. He gaped at her, and the relieved Fillmore sidled off like a bird hopping from the compelling gaze of a snake. He was not quite sure that he was acting correctly in allowing his sister to roam at large among the somewhat Bohemian surroundings of a training-camp, but the instinct of self-preservation turned the scale. He had breakfasted early, and if he did not eat right speedily it seemed to him that dissolution would set in.
“Whazzat?” said Mr. Burrowes feebly.
“It took him fifteen rounds to get a referee’s decision over Cyclone Mullins,” said Sally severely, “and K-leg Binns …”
Mr. Burrowes rallied.
“You ain’t got it right,” he protested. “Say, you mustn’t believe what you see in the papers. The referee was dead against us, and Cyclone was down once for all of half a minute and they wouldn’t count him out. Gee! You got to kill a guy in some towns before they’ll give
