Whereupon Darcy burst into tumultuous weeping, declared that she hadn’t a friend in the world, and didn’t care, anyway, because she wished she was dead, and went forth of that unsympathetic spot with the air and expression of one spurning earth’s vanities and deceptions forever. Being wise in her generation and kind, Gloria knew that the girl would go back to her martyrdom. So she called up Andy Dunne for a conference, which concluded with this sage advice from her to him:
“This is the appointed time, Andy. When she comes back, put the screws on hard. She’ll go through. If she doesn’t, let me know.”
No scapegrace of school, led back from truancy after some especially nefarious project, ever wore a face of more tremulous abasement than Miss Darcy Cole, returning to her faithful trainer whom she had kicked in the jaw. As he entered the gymnasium a strip of court-plaster on the curve of his chin caught her fascinated attention and for the moment evicted from her mind the careful apology which she had formulated. Before she could recapture it, the opportunity was gone. “Time!” barked Mr. Dunne.
The day’s work was on.
Such an ordeal as Darcy underwent in consequence of Gloria’s advice, few of Mr. Dunne’s pupils other than professional athletes would have been called upon to endure, a fact which might have helped her had she known it. Not knowing it, she won through that violent hour on sheer grit. At the trainer’s final “Nuff,” she contrived to smile, but she couldn’t quite manage to walk off the floor. She sat down upon a convenient medicine-ball and waited for the dimness to clear. A hand fell on her shoulder and rested there with an indefinable pressure of fellowship. She looked up to see the taskmaster standing above her.
“Say, kid,” he began. “Yah are a kid, ainche?” he broke off, a little doubtfully.
“I’m going—on—twenty-two,” panted Darcy.
“Yeh, I’d figure yah about there—now. Well, I’m an old man; old enough for the father stuff. And I wanta tell yah something. I like yah. D’ yah know why I like yah?”
Darcy, with brightening eye, shook her head.
“Because yah’r game,” said Mr. Andy Dunne.