"Hang me if I do!" says he, jumpin' up and measurin' off three-foot steps across the floor. "The Lady Evelyn's going back to England in a few days, but before she leaves I want her to have a chance to--well, to see that I'm not the sort she 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 anything else, claimin' his weight and reach made it an even thing. So I takes him on, an' we bills the go for the next afternoon. "I may have to bring up Swifty Joe for a bottle-holder," says I, "an' Swifty ain't just what you'd call parlor broke."