"You've lost your address book," declared that young lady
indignantly. "Polly Parsons is not the person you have in mind. I'll
be old soon enough without that! The chaperon of this party is my
adopted sister, Winnie."

"Oh, fun!" accepted the nominee with delight. "We had a course in
that at school." And Winnie, in all the glory of her fluffy
youthfulness, toyed carefully with the points of her Moorish collar.
"I was elected chaperon of the Midnight Fudge Club, and the girls
all said that I fooled Old Meow oftener than anybody!"

Thereafter there was no lull in the conversation; for Winnie, once
started on school reminiscences, filled all gaps to overflowing; and
Sammy Chirp, he of the feeble smile, whose diffidence had denied him
the gift of language, gazed on her in rapt and happy stupefaction.

Meanwhile, Johnny Gamble found himself gazing as raptly at Constance
until the chaperon, in a brief interlude between reminiscences,
caught him at it. She reached over and touched him on the back of
the hand with the tip of one soft pink finger. Immediately she held
that finger to her right eye and closed her left one, and Johnny
felt himself blushing like a school-boy.

There was a trace of resentment in his embarrassment, he found. The
strain of being compelled to make a million dollars, before he could
tell this only desirable young woman in the world that he loved her,
was beginning to oppress him. He wanted to tell her now; but it was
a task beyond him to ask her to forfeit her own fortune until he
could replace it by another. Times were hard, he reflected.