Such an ordeal as Darcy underwent in consequence of Gloria’s advice, few of Mr. Dunne’s pupils other than professional athletes would have been called upon to endure, a fact which might have helped her had she known it. Not knowing it, she won through that violent hour on sheer grit. At the trainer’s final “Nuff,” she contrived to smile, but she couldn’t quite manage to walk off the floor. She sat down upon a convenient medicine-ball and waited for the dimness to clear. A hand fell on her shoulder and rested there with an indefinable pressure of fellowship. She looked up to see the taskmaster standing above her. “Say, kid,” he began. “Yah are a kid, ainche?” he broke off, a little doubtfully. “I’m going—on—twenty-two,” panted Darcy. “Yeh, I’d figure yah about there—now. Well, I’m an old man; old enough for the father stuff. And I wanta tell yah something. I like yah. D’ yah know why I like yah?” Darcy, with brightening eye, shook her head. “Because yah’r game,” said Mr. Andy Dunne. A voice within Darcy’s heart burst into song. For the first time in her life she had been praised to the limit of a fellow being’s measure. For gameness, as she well knew, was the ultimate virtue to the athlete mind. The Big Feller had been game, even in his downfall; it was that, over and above all his victories, which had enshrined him in Andy Dunne’s and thousands of other stout and inexpressive hearts. Her trainer had paid her his finest compliment. “Yah’r game,” he repeated. “I dunno exactly what yah’r out after, but I’m backin’ yah to get it.” “Thank you, Mr. Dunne,” said Darcy gratefully. “Grmph!” retorted that gentleman. “Cut the Mister. Andy, to you.” “Thank you, Andy,” said the recipient of the accolade. CHAPTER VII “_Rum_-tu m-tu m-tu m-tu m-tu m-tiddle!” THE voice sounded, fresh and brisk from behind the portals of the Fifty-Sixth Street eyrie. It was followed by a rapid succession of floppish noises which fell strangely upon the ears of Miss Maud Raines and Miss Helen Barrett, panting after their long ascent, outside the door. They had returned from a shopping tour at the unaccustomed hour of three when Darcy usually could rely upon having the place to herself. “Isn’t Darcy the gay young sprite!” said Helen as the song burst forth again. “Flip-flop, flippity-floppity-flub” sounded in progression across the living-room floor. The two fiancées looked at each other in bewilderment. “What on earth!” said Maud Raines. Again the voice was uplifted, in familiar melody, gemmed with words less familiar: “Ru m-tu m-tu m-tu m-tu m-tu m-tiddle, I have rolled ten pounds from off my middle. By rolling on the floor, (Flip! Flop!) As I told you before, Behind! Behind! Before!” (Floppity-flop!) “I do believe she’s _doing_ it,” whispered Helen in awed accents. The voice, with its strange accompaniments, resumed: