So I moped around the clubs, backed the light-weight champion of the hour for a big match, put up a pile of money on him, and saw it fade away and take with it my trust in champions.  Dad was good about it, and put up what I’d gone over my allowance without a whimper.  Then I chased around the country in the Yellow Peril and won three races down at Los Angeles, touring down and back with a fellow who had slathers of money, wore blue ties, and talked through his nose.  I leave my enjoyment of the trip to your imagination.

When I got back, I had the Yellow Peril refitted and the tonneau put back on, and went in for society.  I think that spell lasted as long as three weeks; I quit immensely popular with a certain bunch of widows and the like, and with a system so permeated with tea and bridge that it took a stiff course of high-balls and poker to take the taste out of my mouth.

I think it was in March that Barney came back; but he came back an engaged young man, so that in less than a week Barney began to pall.  His fiancee had got him to swear off on poker and prize-fighting and smokers and everything.  And I leave it to you if there would be much left of a fellow like Barney.  All he was free to do—­or wanted to do—­was sit in a retired corner of the club with Shasta water and cigarettes for refreshments, and talk about Her, and how It had happened, and the pangs of uncertainty that shot through his heart till he knew for sure.  Barney’s full as tall as I am, and he weighs twenty-five pounds more; and to hear a great, hulking brute like that talking slush was enough to make a man forswear love in all forms forever.  He’d show me her picture regular, every time I met him, and expect me to hand out a jolly.  She wasn’t so much, either.  Her nose was crooked, and she didn’t appear to have any eyebrows to speak of.  I’d like to have him see—­well, a certain young woman with eyelashes and—­Oh, well, it wasn’t Barney’s fault that he’d never seen a real beauty, and so was satisfied with his particular Her.  I began to shy at Barney, and avoided him as systematically as if I owed him money; which I didn’t.  I just couldn’t stand for so much monologue with a girl with no eyebrows and a crooked nose for the never-failing subject.

My next unaccountable notion was manifested in an unreasoning dislike of Rankin.  He got to going to some mission-meetings, somewhere down near the Barbary Coast; I got out of him that much, and that he sometimes led the meetings.  Rankin can’t lie—­or won’t—­so he said right out that he was doing what little he could to save precious souls.  That part was all right, of course; but he was so beastly solemn and sanctimonious that he came near sending my soul—­maybe it isn’t as precious as those he was laboring with—­straight to the bad place.

Every morning when he appeared like the ghost of a Puritan ancestor’s remorse at my bedside, I swore I’d send him off before night.  To look at him you’d think I had done a murder and he was an eye-witness to the deed.  Still, it’s pretty raw to send a man off just because he’s the embodiment of punctiliousness and looks virtuously grieved for your sins.  In his general demeanor, I admit that Rankin was quite irreproachable—­and that’s why I hated him so.