thinks I am. And I want you to help me
out, professor."

"Ah, say, you got the wrong transfer," says I. "I'm nothin' but a dub at
anything like that. What you want is to get Clyde Fitch to build you a
nice little one-act scene where you can play leadin' gent to her leadin'
lady."

"You're mistaken, Shorty," says he. "I'm not putting up a game. No
heroics for me. I'm just a plain, ordinary chump, and willing to let it
go at that. But I'm no softy, and she's got to know it. There's another
thing: mother and sister have carried this athletic nonsense about far
enough. They'd like to exhibit me to all the fool women they know, as a
kind of modern Hercules, and I'm sick of it. Now, I've got a plan that
ought to cure 'em of that."

For Jarvis, it wa'n't so slow. Say, he ain't half so much asleep as he
looks. His proposition is to spring the real thing on 'em, a five-round
go for keeps, with ring-weight gloves, and all the trimmin's.

"They've been bothering me for more," says he. "I haven't heard anything
else since you were there. And Lady Evelyn's been putting them up to it,
I'll bet a hat. What do you say, professor? Wouldn't you give it to
them?"

"I sure would," says I. "It's comin' to 'em. And I know of two likely
Red Hook boys that's just achin' to get at each other in the ring for a
fifty-dollar purse."

"No, no," says Jarvis. "I mean to be in this myself. It's--it's
necessary, you know."

"Oh!" says I, looking him over kind of curious. "But see here, do you
think you'd be good for five rounds?"

"I'm not quite in condition now," says he; "but there was a time--"

You know. You've seen these college-trained boxers, that think they're
hittin' real hard when their punch wouldn't dent a cheese-pie.

"We'd have to fake it some," says I.

"Oh, no, that wouldn't do at all," says Jarvis. "This must be a genuine
match. I'll put up ten to one, five hundred to fifty; and if I stay the
five rounds I get the fifty."

"Whe-e-ew!" says I. "It'd be like takin' candy from a kid. I couldn't do
it."

Jarvis, he kind of colored up at that, but he didn't go off his nut. "I
beg pardon," says he; "but I have an idea, you know, that it wouldn't be
so one-sided as you think."

Well, say, I've made lots of easy money off'n ideas just like that, and
when it was put up to me as a personal favor to do it, I couldn't renig.
It did go against the grain to play myself for a longshot, though; but
Jarvis wouldn't listen to anythin