Johnny, relying like a lost mariner on Polly Parsons and Constance Joy to help him pick out a present for his only mother, approached Lofty's with a diffidence amounting to awe. In that exclusive shop he would meet miles of furbelowed femininity, but he would not have ventured unprotected into those fluffed and billowed aisles for anything short of a penance.
Being a philosopher, however, he kept his mind active in as many other directions as possible, like a child deliberately feasting upon thoughts of Santa Claus though on the way to a promised spanking.
"There's a hoodoo on this block," Johnny observed as they were caught in the traffic crush almost in front of their destination.
"Lofty and Ersten must be the hoodooers, then," laughed Polly. "Everybody else has gone away."
Johnny looked at the towering big Lofty establishment, which occupied half the block, and at the dingy little ladies' tailoring shop, down around the other corner, with speculative curiosity. About both, as widely different as they were, there was the same indefinable appearance of prosperity, as if the solid worth from within shone heavily through.
"Lofty's couldn't move and Ersten wouldn't," supplemented Constance.
"Not that Dutchman!" returned Polly, laughing again as she peered into the low dark windows of the ladies' tailoring shop. "I was in the other day, and he told me three times that he would be right there to make my walking frocks for the next thirteen years."
"He was having a quarrel with Mr. Schnitt about the light in the workroom when I was in," observed Constance, "but he told me the same thing, in his enjoyable German way, and he seemed almost angry about it."
"That's the extent of his lease," guessed Johnny shrewdly. "They're trying to get it away from him."
"I wonder why," speculated Constance.
"It's as simple as spending money," Johnny announced. "Lofty intends building an extension."
"They won't tear down Ersten's shop," Polly confidently asserted.
"They'll move him in a wheelbarrow some night," Johnny prophesied. "If I could grab his lease I could play a few hours."
Both the girls laughed at him for that speech.
"You'll be gray before the thirty-first of May," warned Polly.
"It turns anybody gray to dig up a million," agreed Johnny. "It's a good guess, though, Polly. I counted seven new white ones this morning."
"That's a strange coincidence," commented Constance, with a secretly anxious glance at his hair. "You're just seven hours behind your schedule."
Johnny shook his head.
"That schedule goes round like an electric fan," he soberly declared.
"And there's no switch," Constance reminded him.
"Gresham," Johnny suggested with a smile.
Polly cast a sidelong glance at the pretty cousin into whose family she had been adopted. The subject of Gresham was a painful one; and Johnny felt his blundering bluntness keenly.
"There isn't any Gresham," laughingly asserted Polly. "There never was any Gresham. Let's go to Coney Island to-night."
Both Constance and Johnny gave Polly a silent but sincere vote of thanks.
Willis Lofty, who continued the progressive fortune of his father by prowling about the vast establishment with a microscopic eye, approached Polly with more than a shopkeeper's alacrity.
"You promised to send for me to be your clerk the next time you came in," he chided her.
"I didn't come in this time," she gaily returned. "Mr. Gamble is the customer," and she introduced Constance and the two gentlemen. "Mr. Gamble wants to buy a silk shawl for a blue-eyed mother with gray wavy hair and baby-pink cheeks."
"There are a lot of pretty shawls here," Constance added, "but none of them seems quite good enough for this kind of a mother."
Young Lofty, himself looking more like a brisk and natty college youth who had come in to buy a gift for his own mother than the successful business man he was, glanced at the embarrassed Johnny with thorough understanding.
"I think I know what you want," he said pleasantly; and, calling a boy, he gave him some brief instructions. "We have some very beautiful samples of French embroidered silks, just in yesterday, and if I can get them away from our buyer you may have your choice. There's a delicate gray, worked in pink, which would be very becoming to a mother of that description. They're quite expensive, but, I believe, are worth the money."
"That's what I want," stated Johnny. "I understand you're going to build an extension, Mr. Lofty."
The girls gasped and then almost tittered.
Young Lofty ceased immediately to be the suave master of friendly favors and became the harassed slave of finance.
"I don't know where you secured your information," he protested.
"I'm a fancy guesser," returned Johnny with a grin.
"I wish you were right," said Lofty soberly. "We have quietly gained possession of nearly all the property in the block, but we're not quite ready to build, nevertheless."
"I can finish the sad story," sympathized Johnny. "One granite-headed ladies' tailor threatens to block the way for thirteen years."
Lofty was surprised by the accuracy of his knowledge. "I'd like to borrow your guesser," he admitted.
Johnny and the girls looked at each other with smiles of infantile glee. They were delighted that they had deduced all this while waiting for a traffic Napoleon to blow his whistle.
"Somebody's been telling," surmised Lofty. "The worst of it is, we own the original lease. Father covered the entire block, in fact."
Johnny's thorough knowledge of New York business conditions enabled him to make another good conjecture.
"Your firm has made money too fast," he remarked. "Your father hoped to build in twenty years, and you need to build in seven."
"He provided much better than that," returned Lofty in quick defense of his father's acumen. "He only allowed ten-year leases; but the one occupied by Ersten came to him with a twenty-year life on it. We've bought off all the other tenants, at startlingly extravagant figures in some cases; but Ersten won't listen."
"Did you rattle your keys?" inquired Johnny, much interested.
"As loudly as possible," returned Lofty, smiling. "I went up three steps at a time until I had offered him a hundred thousand; then I quit. Money wouldn't buy him."
"Then you can't build," innocently remarked Constance.
Willis Lofty immediately displayed his real age in his eyes and his jaws.
"I'll tear down the top part of his building and put a tunnel around him if necessary," he asserted.
"You won't like that any better than Ersten," commented Johnny. "I think I'll have to make another guess for you."
"I like your work," replied Lofty with a smile. "Let's hear it."
"All right. I guess I'll buy Ersten's lease for you."
"You'll have to find another answer, I'm afraid," Lofty hopelessly stated. "I've had a regiment of real estate men helping me devil Ersten to death, but he won't sell."
"Of course he'll sell," declared Johnny confidently. "You can buy anything in New York if you go at it right. Each deal is like a Chinese puzzle. You never do it twice alike."
"Try this one," urged Lofty. "There's a good commission in it."
"Commission? Not for Johnny!" promptly refused that young man; "I'll buy it myself, and hold you up for it."
"If you come at me too strongly I'll build that tunnel," warned Lofty.
"I'll figure it just below tunnel prices," Johnny laughingly assured him. The gray shawl with the pink relief came up just then, and all four of them immediately bought it for Johnny's sole surviving mother.
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