weight," 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 rallies.

"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 you a decision.
At that, they couldn't do nothing so raw as make it anything but a win
for my boy, after him leading by a mile all the way. Have you ever seen
Bugs, ma'am?"

Sally had to admit that she had not had that privilege. Mr. Burrowes
with growing excitement felt in his breast-pocket and produced a
picture-postcard, which he thrust into her hand.

"That's Bugs," he said. "Take a slant at that and then tell me if he
don't look the goods."

The photograph represented a young man in the irreducible minimum of
clothing who crouched painfully, as though stricken with one of the
acuter forms of gastritis.

"I'll call him over and have him sign it for you," said Mr. Burrowe