Finally, me and the Kid packed up and kissed the sanitarium good-by, but every afternoon at three we went over and Scanlan put on the gloves with Arthur for a while, because I had give my word to his girl. Arthur got so he lived all the rest of the day and night lookin' forward to three o'clock in the afternoon. He snarled at the doctors, cuffed the orderlies, didn't know Miss Woods from the iron gate that kept him in there, but the minute Scanlan breezed into the yard with the gloves his face would be one big smile.
This went on for three months—and then Miss Vincent stepped into the thing.
She wanted to know where the Kid was goin' every afternoon at three o'clock, and like a simp, I told her the whole story. She thanks me with a odd look that I didn't get till that night, when the Kid comes tearin' in to our room at the hotel and slams the door. When he gets where he can make his tongue do like he asks it, he says it's all off between him and Miss Vincent. By usin' some judgment and four hours of time I find out that Miss Vincent thinks this stuff about the Kid boxin' Arthur is a lot of bunk and the Kid was really goin' back to the sanitarium every day to see Miss Woods. She has give that nurse the once over and then used some woman's arithmetic which makes two and two equal nine, get me? Well, one word led to another, and finally she tells him if he don't cut the sanitarium out, she's off him for life.
That's a bad way to handle Scanlan. He's Irish and—you know!
He told her we give our word and he was gonna box Arthur till they remodeled Arthur's skull, no matter what happened. Then Miss Vincent gets sensible and weeps. In a minute the Kid is on his knees, and she shows more sense than usual by chasin' him at that point. At the bottom of the stairs, Scanlan calls up and asks if he can kiss her good night. She tells him it's too late now, he has missed the psychological moment.
That last was what had the Kid up in the air. He didn't know what it meant, except that it was a cinch she wasn't wishin' him good luck. That psychological thing was past me, too. I looked it up in the dictionary, and it was there all right, but it could have been in Russia as far as I was concerned, because the way it described it was over my head. The Kid finally puts it right up to Miss Vincent, and she tells him to find out for himself.
"Go over to that trick sanitarium of yours, and ask Miss Woods," she tells him scornfully. "Maybe she can tell you what it means!"
But at two o'clock, when the Kid is leavin' for his daily maulin' bee with big Arthur, she comes along in her racin' car and asks him to go to Los Angeles with her. The Kid stalls and says he's just about got time to get over and give the South American entry a workout, although he'd rather take the ride with her than defend his title against a one-armed blind man. She frowns for a minute, and then she smiles and says hop in with her and she'll drive him over to the sanitarium.
When they blowed in that night at seven o'clock, I seen the Kid looks kinda worried, while he's washin' the Golden West off his face and neck, so I ask him how Arthur is comin' along. Scanlan coughs a couple of times and then he says he don't know, because he wasn't able to get over there that afternoon—the first he'd missed since I promised the world's champion girl I'd assist her. While I'm still bawlin' him out, he claims it wasn't his fault, because the car broke down in the middle of California and they had to get towed back.
I will say I was sorry to find out that Miss Vincent wasn't above a little rough stuff! Oh, you ladies!