"Yes, Kane, do give it up now!" chimes in Dolores, presentin' the Kid with a glance for which I would of give up a leg. "Please don't fight this—oh, this terrible brute who killed a man! I—"
The Kid grins and holds up his hand. "Just a moment, both of you," he says. "I am to receive three hundred thousand dollars—pardon the vulgar mention of money, but in my case it is obviously the incentive—for engaging in two bouts, the first of which is with this Enright fellow. I am taking no more risk—perhaps less—with him than I have in the other bouts I've engaged in. The three hundred thousand means a fair start back for father and"—he smiles at Dolores—"and at least that you may have a maid, a modest shopping account, a—"
"Look here, son," interrupts old man Halliday, "I appreciate the force of your argument, but I do not want my son killed to make a—well, to make a Roman Halliday, one might say!"
"Good heavens, dad, what an atrocious pun!" says the Kid. "Consider your case lost!"
"You know it will not make any difference to me whether or not we have—I mean, I have servants or a shopping account, or—or anything," says Dolores, whose old man has six dollars for every salmon in the Columbia River, "I'd love to make my own gowns and cook and—and everything!"
"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" remarks her father, old Senator Brewster. "And yet they say prohibition has removed all the humor from dinner parties!"
Old man Halliday tries his luck again.
"At least, Kane," he says—"at least you might hold
