Into the box where Miss Constance Joy—slender and dark and tall—entertained her bevy of admirers, there swished a violently-gowned young woman of buxom build and hearty manner, attended by a young man who wore a hundred-dollar suit and smiled feebly whenever he caught an eye. In his right hand he carried Miss Polly Parsons' gloves and parasol; in his left, her race-card and hand-bag. Round his shoulders swung her field-glasses; from his right pocket protruded her fan and from his left her auto veil. She carried her own vanity box.
"If you aren't the darlingest thing in the world!" she greeted Miss Joy, whose face had lighted with a smile of both amusement and pleasure. "You certainly are some Con! Every time I see you in a new gown I change my dressmaker. Hello, boys!" She shook hands cordially with all of them as soon as she had paid her brief respects to Mrs. Pattie Boyden, who was pleasant and indulgent enough in her greeting, though not needlessly so.
"You're looking as happy as ever, Polly," observed Constance.
"I'm as happy as a mosquito in a baby's crib," avowed Polly. "I've added three thousand to-day to the subscription list for our Ocean View Baby Hotel. Where's that list, Sammy?"
Sammy Chirp passed a few things from his right to his left hand and searched a few pockets; passed a few things from his left to his right hand, dropped the lady's handkerchief and picked it up, smiled feebly upon everybody, and then at last produced the subscription list, which Miss Joy read most interestedly.
"That's splendid, Polly!" she approved. "Another day's work as good as this, and we'll be able to buy our hotel."
Paul Gresham, standing stiffly between her and Polly, looked down at her and smiled correctly.
"I guess we'd better go, don't you think?" he remarked to the other young men.
"You're safe enough," retorted Polly. "You're safe any place with your check-book. Besides, we don't want to double names on this list. We'll spring another one when we're ready to equip and run the place. Oh, there's Johnny Gamble! Hello, Johnny!" And she leaned far over the rail to call to him.
It was strange how quickly Johnny Gamble was able to distinguish a sound coming from that direction, and he looked up immediately. "Come right up here, Johnny," she commanded him. "I have a great surprise in store for you."
"Go any place you say if it's not too hot there," he cheerfully assured her, and started off towards the staircase.
"When I get Johnny Gamble's name this list is closed," said Polly confidently.
"I'll bet with you on that," offered Bruce Townley. "Johnny probably hasn't enough money to buy a tin rattle for your babies' hotel."
"No!" she protested, shocked. "I'm so used to seeing him with money that I don't think I'd know him if he had it shaved off."
"He was too honest, as usual," supplemented Val Russel, lounging carelessly against the rail. "Here comes Ashley Loring. He can tell you all about it. Johnny Gamble hasn't a cent left, has he, Loring?"
"It would be most unprofessional to discuss Mr. Gamble's private affairs," said Loring reprovingly as he came into the box. "Aside from a mere detail like that, I don't mind saying that Johnny Gamble has just bet the last hundred dollars he has in the world on an absolutely criminal long shot."
"I hope he wins!" stated Polly heartily. "I think he's the only real gentleman I ever knew."
"Well, I like that!" protested Val Russel, laughing.
"I don't mean a slam at you boys," she hastily corrected. "You're a nice clean bunch; but I know so much about Johnny. He helps people, then hides so he can't be thanked. He's the one man out of a thousand that both women and men can absolutely trust."
"That's rather a broad statement," objected Paul Gresham, who had eyed Polly with fastidious distaste every time she spoke. He was a rather silent young man with a thin high-arched nose and eyebrows that met, and was so flawlessly dressed that he sat stiffly.
"I'll make it two in a thousand, Mr. Gresham," said Polly pleasantly. "I hadn't noticed you; and whatever I am I try to be polite."
The four other young men, who were used to Polly's sweeping generalities, laughed; for Polly had their hearty approval.
Johnny Gamble arrived.
"Where's the surprise?" he demanded with a furtive glance in the direction of Miss Joy, a glance which Gresham jealously resented.
"Me!" Polly gaily told him, thrusting her subscription list into the pocket of Sammy Chirp. "You haven't seen me since I got back."
"You're no surprise—you're a gasp!" he informed her, heartily glad to see her. "That sunset bonnet is a maraschino."
"Pinkest one they had," she complacently assured him. "I want you to meet some friends of mine, Johnny." And, with vast pride in her acquaintanceship with all parties concerned, she introduced him to Constance and Aunt Pattie.
Johnny Gamble and Constance Joy, for just a moment, looked upon each other with the frank liking which sometimes makes strangers old friends. Gresham saw that instant liking and stiffened. Johnny Gamble, born in a two-room cottage and with sordid experiences behind him of which he did not like to think in this company, dropped his eyes; whereupon Miss Constance Joy, who had been cradled under silken coverlets, studied him serenely. She had little enough opportunity to inspect odd types at close range—and this was a very interesting specimen. His eyes were the most remarkable blue she had ever seen.
"Cousin Polly has been telling us most pleasant things about you," she observed.
"Your cousin Polly?" he inquired, perplexed.
"Yes; we're cousins now," announced Polly happily. "It's the first time I ever had any relations, and I'm tickled stiff!"
"So am I!" agreed Johnny heartily, figuring vaguely that somebody or other must have married.
"You are just in the nick of time, Gamble," Gresham quietly stated with a deliberate intention of humiliating this child of no one. "Miss Polly has a subscription list which she wants you to complete."
"He's too late," replied Polly with a flash of her eyes in Gresham's direction. "Mr. Loring just closed up that list," and she winked vigorously at Loring.
"Loring's my friend," Gamble said with a cheerful laugh. "I have check-writer's cramp. Who's to get the loving cup?"
"The loving cup's a bottle," Polly returned. "This is a baby's benefit. It's Constance's pet scheme and I'm crazy about it. We've found a big, hundred-room summer hotel, with two hundred acres of ground, on a high bluff overlooking the ocean; and we're going to turn it into a free hotel for sickly babies and their mothers. Isn't that some scheme?"
"I'm so strong for it I ache!" announced Mr. Gamble with fervor. "Put me down for—" He checked himself ruefully. "I forgot I was broke!" Gresham shrugged his shoulders in satisfaction.
"You'll take something for that," Polly confidently comforted her friend Gamble. "There's G. W. Mason & Company, Johnny. Take me over to him and watch me fool him when he says he has no check-book with him. I have check blanks on every bank in town. Bring along my hand-bag and my subscription list, Sammy."
When they had gone, with the feebly pleased Sammy dutifully bringing up the rear, Gresham looked after them with relief.
"Handicap day brings out some queer people," he observed.
"If you mean Mr. Gamble I think him delightful," Constance quickly advised him. "I'm inclined to agree with Polly that he is very much a gentleman."
"He would be quite likely to appeal to Polly," remarked Aunt Pattie as she arose for a visit to a near-by box.
"You mean Cousin Polly," corrected Constance sweetly.
Gresham was very thoughtful. He was more logically calculating than most people thought him.
It was Polly's cousinship which puzzled Johnny Gamble. "When you picked a cousin you made some choice," he complimented her. "How did you do it?"
"They made me," she explained. "You know that Billy Parsons was the only man I ever wanted to marry—or ever will, I guess. His folks met me once and wouldn't stand for me at all; then Billy took sick and went out of his head. He cried for me so that the doctor said he had to have me; so I canceled the best engagement I ever had. I wasn't a star, but I was featured and was making an awful hit. I went right to the house, though, and stayed two months—till Billy died. Then I went back to work; but I hated it. Well, along toward the last they'd got so friendly that I was awful lonesome. It wasn't long till they got lonesome too. They're old, you know; and Billy was all they had. So they came after me and I went with them; and they adopted me and we all love each other to death. Constance's my cousin now—and she stands it without batting an eyelash. She's about the cream of the earth, Johnny!"
He drew in his breath sharply.
"You're a lucky kid!" he told her.
There was something in the intensity of his tone which made her look up at him, startled.
"Now don't you fall in love with her, Johnny!" she begged.
"Why not?" he demanded. "I never tried it; but I bet I can do it."
"That's the trouble," she expostulated; "it's too easy. You can fall in all right, but how will you get out?"
"I don't want out," he assured her. "I play marbles for keeps."
"All right then; take to pickles and perfume. Look here, Johnny; if none of her own set can ring her with an orange wreath what can an outsider do?"
"How do I know till I try?" he inquired. "I get you, Polly. You mean I'm not in her class; but, you see, I want her!"
"So do the others," she objected.
"They're not used to hard work," he earnestly informed her. "Say, I need a million dollars."
"Take enough while you're at it! What do you want it for?"
"Her stack's that high."
"She'd never count it."
"I know; but Aunt Pattie and I would. I have to have it, Polly."
"Then you'll get it," she resignedly admitted. "Why, Johnny, I believe you could get Constance, too!" she added with suddenly accelerated belief in him. "Well, I'm certainly for you. Tell me, what can I do to help you?"
"Poison Gresham for me."
"Give me your fifteen cents," she directed. "He's about as popular with her as a flea with a dog; but he goes with the furniture. He was wished on her by her Aunt Gertrude."
"Why did her aunt hate her?"
"She hated everybody; so she went in for charity. She made six wills, each time leaving all her money to a different public institution; but they each one did something she didn't like before she could die. The last time she decided to give Constance a chance, made a new will and took sick the same night. Constance has the interest on her million till she marries Gresham; then she gets it all. If she marries anybody else before Gresham dies the money goes to a home for blind cats, or something like that."
"Healthy soul, wasn't she?" commiserated Johnny. "But why Gresham?"
"The bug for family. Aunt Gertrude's father didn't make his tobacco-trust money fast enough for her to marry Gresham's father, who would have been a lord if everybody in England had died. Constance is to bring aristocracy into the family now."
"Tell her to tear up that million. I'll get her another one," offered Johnny easily.
"You'll need some repairs before you start," she suggested. "They tell me you're down and out."
"Tell them to guess again!" he indignantly retorted. "I own all the to-morrows in the world. There's money in every one of them."
"I've got an awful big bank-account that needs exercise," she offered. "Now, look here, Johnny, don't yell like I'd hit you with a brick. You told me to help myself once when I needed it, and I did. You ought to let me get even. All right, then; be stingy! Where's Sammy?" She had been feeling in both sleeves with a trace of annoyance, and now she turned to discover Sammy a few paces back, idly watching a policeman putting an inebriated man off the track. "Sammy!" she called him sharply. He came, running and frightened. "I've lost my handkerchief," she informed him. "Go get it." Sammy smiled gratefully and was gone.
"Where did you find it?" asked Johnny, indicating the departing messenger. "Follow you home one cold night, or did a friend give it to you?"
"Oh, no," she said carelessly; "it just sticks around. I can't get rid of it, so I've trained it to be handy when I need it."
She fastened upon Colonel Mason just as the horses came to the post, and she was supplying him with a check blank just as they got away from the barrier. Gamble turned to the track and distinguished his long shot off in the lead. He smiled grimly at that irony, for he had seen long-shot horses raise false hopes before. Mildly interested, he watched Angora reach the quarter pole, still in the lead. Rather incredulously, he saw her still in the lead at the half. He was eager about it when she rounded the three-quarters with nothing but daylight before her; and as she came down the stretch, with Nautchautauk reaching out for her flanks, he stuck the ash-end of his cigar in his mouth and did not see the finish. He knew, by the colossal groan from the grandstand, however, that Angora had beaten the favorite; and, though he was not in the least excited, he felt through all his pockets for his tickets, forgetting that he had taken them out at the beginning of the race and still held them in his hand; also, he forgot completely that he was supposed to be escorting Polly, and immediately sauntered down to the betting shed—to collect the largest five thousand and one hundred dollars in captivity.
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