"What has she got to do with it?" asked Jimmy, interested.
For a moment Jerry hesitated, but the desire for sympathy and advice was too strong for him. And after all there was no harm in confiding in a good comrade like Jimmy.
"It's like this," he said. "Miss Ann and me had got it all fixed up to kidnap the kid!"
"What!"
"Say, I don't mean ordinary kidnapping. It's this way. Miss Ann come to me and we agree that the kid's a pest that had ought to have some strong-arm keep him in order, so we decide to get him away to a friend of mine who keeps a dogs' hospital down on Long Island. Bud Smithers is the guy to handle that kid. You ought to see him take hold of a dog that's all grouch and ugliness and make it over into a dog that it's a pleasure to have around. I thought a few weeks with Bud was what the doctor ordered for Ogden, and Miss Ann guessed I was right, so we had it all framed. And now this happens and balls everything up! She can't do nothing with a husky kid like that without me to help her. And how am I going to help her if I'm not allowed in the house?"
Jimmy was conscious of a renewed admiration for a girl whom he had always considered a queen among women. How rarely in this world did one find a girl who combined every feminine charm of mind and body with a resolute determination to raise Cain at the slightest provocation!
"What an absolutely corking idea!"
Jerry smirked modestly at the approbation, but returned instantly to his gloom.
"You get me now? What am I to say to her? She'll be sore!"
"The problem," Jimmy had begun, "is one which, as you suggest, presents certain—" when there was a knock at the door and the head of the boarding-house's maid-of-all-work popped in.