So it was settled. Ten minutes later the room was dark, David was in bed, and Tom was lying in the space between the bed's foot and the wall, with David's coat for extra covering and with Browning's poems and a volume of Molière as a pillow. There was deep silence for another ten minutes, then a cautious whisper rose from the foot of the bed. "Are you asleep?" "No," said David. "Say, why didn't you have me pinched?" the voice asked. No answer. The voice rose again. "Why did you gimme dat extry egg?" No answer. "Why did you ask me to stay here? Ain't you afraid I'll skin out wid your clo'es?" Again there was no answer. But presently David said: "Better go to sleep, Tom." There was a brief, deep silence; then once more the voice came from the foot of the bed. "I ain't just wise to you," said the voice, and there was a note of huskiness in it, "but say, pard, you gits my vote!" CHAPTER V GUEST TURNS HOST The first object David's eyes fell upon when they opened the next morning was Tom, sitting beside the bed, a look of waiting eagerness on his pinched face. The instant he saw David was awake he sprang up, and David perceived the boy had on one pair of the boxing-gloves. "Can you use de mitts?" Tom asked excitedly. "A little. I used to, that is," David answered, smiling at the odd figure the cow-lick, the eager face, the baggy coat and the big boxing-gloves combined to make of the boy. "Come on, den!--git up! Let's have a go." David slipped out of bed, and while he was dressing Tom entertained him with an account of the Corbett-Britt fight, kinematograph pictures of which he had seen at one of the Bowery theatres. Tom danced about the narrow space between the bed and the wall, taking the part of one man, then of the other, giving blows and receiving blows, feinting, ducking, rushing and being rushed against imaginary ropes, and gasping out bits of description: "Corbett breaks in an' lands like dis--Jimmie hands back dis poke--Corbett goes groggy--dey clinch--bing! bang! biff!--Den Jimmie gits in dis peach--Corbett kerplunks--one, two, t'ree, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten--an' Corbett's a has-been!" By this time David was half-dressed, and had drawn on the other pair of gloves. They gravely shook hands and drew apart. "Be careful, and don't make me a has-been," David cautioned. "Oh, mudder! Fetch me a step-ladder!" besought Tom, looking upward at David's head. He spat from one side of his mouth, drew his head down between his shoulders, rushed in, and began directing a fury of blows at David's stomach, which was near the level of his fists; and it took all David's long-rusted, but one-time considerable, skill to ward off the rapid fists. He made no attempt to get in a blow himself, and this soon drew on him Tom's wrath. "I ain't no baby!" the boy yelled in disgust. "Punch me!" David proceeded to land a few light touches about the slender body. "A-a-h, punch me!" Tom gasped. "Harder!"