"I"ll meet any offer he makes you and tack a five-thousand-dollar bonus to it."
Johnny called up the De Luxe Apartments. Company and secured the ear of Mr. Chase.
"I withdraw my offer of two hundred and seventy-five thousand for that river-view property," he stated. "What is the best bid you will make me above that figure?"
"I"m not inclined to scramble for it," immediately claimed Mr. Chase, who was aware at the time that he was telling a point-blank lie.
"Very well, then," said Johnny, wondering how he was to get a definite figure without committing himself. "I"ll have to drop you out of my calculations."
"When must you know?"
"To-morrow morning."
"You"re bluffing!" charged Mr. Chase scornfully.
"I have two very earnest bidders for the property," insisted Johnny with dignity--and completed his bluff, if Chase cared to regard it that way, by hanging up his receiver.
Before he left the office he entered in his books:
"May 4. Sold; but I don"t know who to or at what price. Close to schedule, though."
He entered the next day in advance:
"May 5. The Babies" Fund Fair--Holiday. Nothing doing."
CHAPTER XII
IN WHICH JOHNNY EVEN DOES BUSINESS AT THE BABIES" FUND FAIR
"I wish I could write poetry," regretted Johnny, looking across at Constance Joy in the violet booth.
"Why don"t you try it?" asked Polly Parsons, following his gaze and comprehending his desire perfectly, for she, too, was a rabid Constancite.
"I did," he confessed with a disappointed laugh. "I hadn"t the nerve to be mushy enough, though--and nothing else seems to be real poetry. I got one line that listened like the goods, but I couldn"t match it up: "As I lie awake and look at the stars--" Pretty good start, eh? How do you find a rhyme for it?"
"You go down through the alphabet," Polly advised him, rather proud to be able to answer him so promptly. "Bars, cars, fars, jars--that way, you know. How I found out is that Sister Winnie writes so much poetry."
"She"s a great kid," laughed Johnny. "Where is she?"
"Round here some place, giving orders to Sammy Chirp. Why are you loafing this afternoon? You"re supposed to be making five thousand dollars an hour, but I don"t see any chance for it here."
"It"s a holiday," he retorted. "You"re loafing yourself. I see it"s on the program that you"re to sell a quarter"s worth of violets and a smile, for five dollars a throw at the boutonniere booth. Notice how I said boutonniere?"
"You got it out of a book," charged Polly disdainfully. "I called Constance over from the candy booth to take my place because a gray-haired rusher came back seven times to have me pin violets on his coat--and I couldn"t smile any more. There he goes now. That"s his second trip for Constance."
"This is a cruel world. I suppose it would fuss her all up if I dropped him out of a window," Johnny observed wistfully.
"Constance doesn"t need help. Just watch her!" And Polly grinned appreciatively as Constance, recognizing and sorting the tottering lady-killer at a glance, took his money handed him a nosegay and a pin, and returned to the back of the booth to arrange her stock:
A huge blot of orange and a thin streak of lavender paused on the other side of the palms. Johnny wondered to see these two enemies together, but no man could know the satisfaction they took in it.
"The violet booth," read the big blot of orange, adjusting her gold lorgnette to the bridge of her globular nose and consulting her catalogue. "Friday afternoon: Polly Parsons and Mrs. Arthur Follison.
That is not Mrs. Follison in the booth, is it?"
"Oh, no, Mrs. Guff!" protested the thin streak of lavender in a rasping little lavender voice. "Mrs. Follison, though not a doll-face--indeed, far from it--is of most aristocratic bearing."
"I suppose that person in the booth, then, is the adopted actress,"
guessed Mrs. Guff. "Any one can tell that"s beauty and movement of the professional type."
Johnny looked at Polly with hasty concern, but that young lady was enjoying the joke on Constance and gripped his arm for silence.
"One can quite understand how poor Billy Parsons might become infatuated with her doll-face," returned Miss Purry pityingly, since she was herself entirely free from the crime of doll-facedness; "but that the Parsons should adopt such a common person merely because Billy died before he could marry her was inconsiderate of the rest of our cla.s.s."
"The artfulness of her!" exclaimed the thick one, lorgnetting the graceful Constance with a fishy eye as the temporary flower girl joyously greeted Ashley Loring and Val Russel and Bruce Townley, pinned bouquets upon them and exchanged laughing banter with them.
"Dreadful!" agreed the shocked thin one. "Those are the very wiles by which doll-faced stage women insnare our most desirable young men."
Constance looked about just then in search of Polly, and her eyes lighted as they saw Johnny standing with her.
"Oh, Polly!" she called.
"Coming, Constance!" returned the hearty and cheery voice of Polly from just behind the critics.
The ladies in lavender and orange were still gasping when Johnny Gamble pa.s.sed them with Polly. He had made up his mind about the river-front property.
Loud acclaim hailed Polly and Johnny, for where they went there was zest of life; and the boys, knowing well that Johnny never wore flowers, made instant way for him at the violet booth.
"I"ll take some blue ones, lady," announced Johnny gamely, intending to wear them with defiance.
"I"ll give you the nearest we have, mister," laughed Constance, and promptly decorated him.
Since this was the closest her face and eyes had ever been to him, he forgot to pay her and had to be reminded of that important duty by Polly and all the boys in unison. There was a faint evasive trace of perfume about her, more like the freshness of morning or the delicacy of starlight than an actual essence, he vaguely thought with a groping return to his poetic inclination. He felt the warmth of her velvet cheek, even at its distance of a foot away, and there seemed to be a pulsing thrill in the very air which intervened. For a startled instant he found himself gazing deep down into her brown eyes. In that instant her red lips curved in a fleeting smile--a smile of the type which needs moist eyes to carry its tenderness. It was all over in a flash, only a fragment of a second, which seemed a blissful pulsing eternity; and at its conclusion he thought that her finger quivered as it brushed his own, where he held out the lapel of his coat, and her cheek paled ever so slightly--but these were dreams, he knew.
"I"m next, I think," grated a usually suave voice which now had a decided tinge of unpleasantness; and Paul Gresham, selecting a bunch of violets from the tray, held them out toward Constance, impatient to end the all too pretty tableau.
"Next and served," Polly briskly told him; and, taking the boutonniere from his fingers, she whisked it into place and pinned it and extracted his money--all apparently in one deft operation.
"Thanks," said Gresham, blinking with the suddenness of it all and sweeping with a glance of gloomy dissatisfaction, Polly, the bouquet, Constance and Johnny. "I thought you were to be in the caramel booth, Constance."
"I"m just going back," she informed him, pausing to straighten Johnny"s lapel, patting it in place and stepping back to view the result with a critical eye. It seemed to need another coaxing bend and another pat, both of which she calmly delivered.
A handsome pa.s.sing couple caught Johnny"s eye--a keen and vigorous-looking elderly gentleman, and Springtime come among them in the pink and white of apple blossoms--sweet and fresh and smiling; as guileless as the May itself, but competent!
"Excuse me," said Johnny, and tore himself away from the girl whose natural beauty made Mrs. Slosher an exquisite work of art. "Beg your pardon, Mr. Slosher."