“How splendid!  I’m sure it needs it.  Railroads are the most disorganized and disorganizing—­”

“And I’m engaged in a freight war with a rival steamship company.  It’s perfectly bully.  I’ve got ’em backed off the map.  We’re carrying stuff for almost nothing and they’re howling for help.”  He had taken out his pipe and was lighting it.  “I’m going to buy ’em out,” he finished.  “But you don’t want to hear about me.  What are—­”

“I do.  Of course”—­and she exchanged a quick glance with me.  “Of course, I see a little about you in the papers—­your interest in athletics—­”

“Oh, I say, Una,” he cried, flushing a dark red.  “It’s not fair to—­”

“I’m fearfully interested,” she persisted calmly.  “You know it’s actually gotten me into the habit of the sporting page.  ‘Walloping’ Houligan and ‘Scotty’ Smith, the Harlem knock-out artist, are no longer empty names for me.  They’re real people with jabs and things.”

“It’s not kind of you—­”

“I’ve been waiting breathlessly for your next encounter.  I hope it’s with ‘Scotty.’  It would be so much more of an achievement to win from a real knock-out artist—­”

“Stop it, Una,” he cried painfully.  “I forbid you—­”

“Do you mean,” she asked innocently, “that you don’t like to discuss—­”

“I—­I’d rather talk of something else,” he stammered.  “I’ve stopped boxing.”

“Why?” wide-eyed.  “The newspapers were wild about you.  It was a fluke, wasn’t it—­Clancy ‘getting’ you in the ninth?”

“No,” he muttered sullenly, “he whipped me fairly.”

“Really.  I’m awfully sorry.  When one sets one’s heart upon a thing—­”

“Will you be quiet, Una?” he cried impetuously.  “I won’t have you talking this way, of these things.  I—­I was jollied into the thing.  I mean,” with a glance at me, “I never thought of the consequences.  It—­it was only a lark.  I’m out of it, for good.”

“Oh!” she said in a subdued tone, her gaze upon a distant tree-trunk.  “It’s too bad.”

Whatever she meant by that cryptic remark, Jerry looked most uncomfortable.  Her irony had cut him to the quick, and her humor had flayed his quivering sensibilities.  That he took it without anger argued much for the quality of the esteem in which he held her.  Another person, even I, in similar circumstances, would have courted demolition.  Secretly, I was delighted.  She had struck just the right note.  He still writhed inwardly, but he made no effort at unconcern.  I think he was perfectly willing that she should be a witness of his self-abasement.

“I was an idiot, Una, a conceited, silly fool.  I deserve everything you say.  I think it makes me a little happier to hear you say it, because if you weren’t my friend you’d have kept quiet.”

“I haven’t said anything,” she remarked urbanely.  “And of course it’s none of my affair.”

“But it is,” he was insisting.