clean-cut figure and his
clean-cut face and his clean, blue eyes and clean complexion, and she
delighted in nothing more than just to sit and watch him when he was
at ease; he was so restful, so certain to be always telling the truth,
to be always taking a charitably good-humored view of life, to turn on
wholesome topics and wholesome points of view; but after he had gone
she smiled and sighed and shook her head.

"Poor Bobby," she mused. "There won't be a shred left of his tender
little fleece by the time he gets through."

One more monitor Bobby went to see that afternoon, and this was Biff
Bates. It required no sending in of cards to enter the presence of
this celebrity. One simply stepped out of the elevator and used one's
latch-key. It was so much more convenient. Entering a big, barnlike
room he found Mr. Bates, clad only in trunks and canvas shoes,
wreaking dire punishment upon a punching-bag merely by way of
amusement; and Mr. Bates, with every symptom of joy illuminating his
rather horizontal features--wide brows, wide cheek-bone, wide nose,
wide mouth, wide chin, wide jaw--stopped to shake hands most
enthusiastically with his caller without removing his padded glove.

"What's the good news, old pal?" he asked huskily.

He was half a head shorter than Bobby and four inches broader across
the shoulders, and his neck spread out over all the top of his torso;
but there was something in the clear gaze of the eyes which made the
two gentlemen look quite alike as they shook hands, vastly different
as they were.

"Bad news for you, I'm afraid," announced Bobby. "That little
partnership idea of the big gymnasium will have to be called off for a
while."

Mr. Bates took a contemplative punch or two at the still quivering
bag.

"It was a fake, anyway," he commented, putting his arm around the top
of the punching-bag and leaning against it comfortably; "just like
this place. You went into partnership with me on this joint--that is,
you put up the coin and run in a lot of your friends on me to be
trained up--squarest lot of sports I ever saw, too. You fill the place
with business and allow me a weekly envelope that makes me tilt my
chin till I have to wear my lid down over my eyes to keep it from
falling off the back of my head, and when there's profits to split up
you shoves mine into my mitt and puts yours into improvements. You put
in the new shower baths and new bars and traps, and the last thing,
that swimmin