"
The White Hope confirmed this.
"Bad boy," he remarked, and with a deep breath resumed excavating work
on a grapefruit.
"Well, I was just making a jump to separate them when this Whiting gook
says, 'Betcha a dollar my kid wins!' and before I knew what I was doing
I'd taken him. It wasn't that that stopped me, though. It was his
saying that his kid took after his dad and could eat up anything of his
own age in America. Well, darn it, could I take that from a slob of a
mixed-ale scrapper when it was handed out at the finest kid that ever
came from New York?"
"Of course not," said Kirk indignantly, and even Mamie forbore to
criticize. She bent over the White Hope and gave his grapefruit-stained
cheek a kiss.
"Well, I _should_ say not!" cried Steve. "I just hollered to his
nibs, 'Soak it to him, kid! for the honour of No. 99'; and, believe me,
the young bear-cat sort of gathered himself together, winked at me, and
began to hammer the stuffing out of the scrappy kid. Say, there wasn't
no sterilized stuff about his work. You were a regular germ, all right,
weren't you squire?"
"Germ," agreed the White Hope. He spoke drowsily.
"Gee!" Steve resumed his saga in a whirl of enthusiasm. "Gee! if
they're right to start with, if they're born right, if they've got the
grit in them, you can't sterilize it out of 'em if you use up half the
germ-killer in the country.
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