Page:The Leather Pushers (1921).pdf/245

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and she's a bit pale and drawn. Sniffin' scornfully at the bespangled, short-skirted ladies of the trapeze and the etc., she made her way over to where we was standin' on the lot. She'd seen me, of course, before, but not the Kid, and she's standin' right in front of him when she asks where she can find the champion.

Roberts has his hat off and is bowin' at her before I can stall her and Mrs. Hurricane Kenney's eyes registers surprise as they sweep the smilin' Kid from stem to stern. No doubt she expected to see some cauliflower-eared, red-faced, snaggled-toothed, hairy cave man instead of this handsome young blond which looked almost slight alongside of her gigantic helpmeet.

Although I kept both ears wide open and both eyes glued on hers whilst she talked, I could find nothin' suspicious about her story—told in a haltin', moist voice which had the sympathetic Kid for her, and me waverin' before she had said six words. It seemed that Joe Kenney had now gone cuckoo on the subject of box fightin', and his idea that he would be the next world's heavyweight champion had been greatly strengthened by the fact that the Kid hadn't flattened him to date. So he has turned his ranch over to a dumb-bell brother to run and, accordin' to Mrs. Kenney, said brother is runnin' it right into the ground.

At this point Mrs. Kenney resorts to the use of props. She extracts a gram of lace from her pocketbook and with a occasional touch of it to the eyes she says she and the Bone Crusher was happy and everything was jake till the circus and the Kid come to town. She don't accuse the Kid in words of havin' gummed things up, but she does it with her eyes, whilst she's half