"The last one?"
"Yes, when you and Ben Schenk was fightin'. Say, you didn't do a thing to him!"
The surest of all antidotes to masculine shyness was not without its immediate effect. Joe straightened his shoulders and smiled complacently.
"Didn't I massacre him?" he said. "That there was a half-Nelson holt I give him. It put him out of business all right, all right. Say, I never knowed you was there!"
"You bet I was," said his companion in honest admiration; "that was when I got stuck on you!"
Before he could fully comprehend the significance of this confession, the curtain rose, and love itself had to make way for the tragic and absorbing career of "The Widowed Bride." By the end of the third act Joe's emotions were so wrought upon by the unhappy fate of the heroine, that he rose abruptly and, muttering something about "gittin' some gum," fled to the rear. When he returned and squeezed his way back to his seat he found "Miss Beaver" with red eyes and a dejected mien.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked banteringly.
"My shoe hurts me," said Miss Beaver evasively.
"What you givin' me?" asked Joe, with fine superiority. "These here kinds of play never hurts my feelin's none. Catch me cryin' at a show!"
But Miss Beaver was too much moved to recover herself at once. She sat in limp dejection and surreptitiously dabbed her eyes with her moist ball of a handkerchief.