"I figured you come from some hick burg like New York," says the runt, ignorin' the Kid's request. "I can spot a guy from New York ten miles away! He knocks Brooklyn, thinks walkin' up Broadway is seein' life, was born in Memphis and is the only thing that keeps the mail order houses in Oshkosh from goin' to the wall! New Yorkers, eh?" he winds up with another insultin' sneer. "I got you!"
"Gobs of generous Gazoopis!" mutters the Kid like he's in a trance. "Sweet Papa!"
The runt looks at him.
"How does that bird fool the almshouse?" he asks me.
I bent down so's I could whisper in the side of his little dome. Them skilled Scandinavians in the buildin' had gone crazy or else some of the night shift had come in with more boilers and things to hit 'em with.
"That's Kid Scanlan, welterweight champion of the world!" I hisses in his ear.
"Ha, ha!" laughs the runt. "That's who he'd like to be, you mean!"
"Our employees is all hale, hearty and hilarious!" grins the Kid at him. "We pay 'em off in money, music and mush! Wow!"
"If that big stiff is tryin' to kid me," begins the runt, gettin' red again, "he—"
"All right, all right!" I butts in quickly. "Don't let's have no violence. Show us what makes that shop go, and we'll grab the next rattler for New York. Y'know the Kid fights Battlin' Edwards on the twenty-first and—"