IN WHICH STRANGERS BECOME OLD FRIENDS
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.