"Were you intending to put him to bed full of broiled lobster and
marshmallows?"
"Nix on the rough stuff, Mamie," pleaded the embarrassed pugilist. "How
was I to know what kids feed on? And maybe he would have passed up the
lobster at that and stuck to the sardines."
"Sardines!"
"Ain't kids allowed sardines?" said Steve anxiously. "The guy at the
store told me they were wholesome and nourishing. It looked to me as if
that ought to hit young Fitzsimmons about right. What's the matter with
them?"
"A little bread-and-milk is all that he ever has before he goes to
bed."
Steve detected a flaw in this and hastened to make his point.
"Sure," he said, "but he don't win the bantam-weight champeenship of
Connecticut every night."
"Is that what he's done to-day, Steve?" asked Kirk.
"It certainly is. Ain't I telling you?"
"That's the trouble. You're not. You and Mamie seem to be having a
discussion about the nourishing properties of sardines and lobster.
What has been happening this afternoon?"
"Bad boy," remarked William Bannister with his mouth full.
"That's right," said Steve. "That's it in a nutshell. Say, it was this
way. It seemed to me that, having no kid of his own age to play around
with, his nibs was apt to get lonesome, so I asked about and found that
there was a guy of the name of Whiting living near here who had a kid
of the same age or thereabouts.
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