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.

He was now twelve hours behind his schedule and possessed of sixty thousand dollars less than he should have.  At nine o’clock to-morrow morning that deficit would begin to pile up again at the rate of five thousand dollars an hour.  By comparison their auto seemed slow, and he spoke to the driver about it.  How well Constance Joy was in sympathy with him and followed his thought, was shown by the fact that she heartily agreed with him, though they were already exceeding the Brooklyn speed limit.

“I not only want to be the chaperon but the dictator of this tour,” declared Winnie when they alighted at the big playground.  “I’ve never been here before, and I don’t want anybody to tell me anything I’m going to see.”

“It’s your party,” announced Johnny promptly.  “Let’s be plumb vulgar about it.”  And he thrust a big roll of bills into her hands.

“You’re a darling!” she exclaimed, her eyes glistening with delight.  “May I kiss him, girls?”

“Ask Johnny,” laughed Polly, but Johnny had disappeared behind the others of the party.

It took Winnie five minutes to chase him down, and she caught him, with the assistance of Constance, in the thickest crowd and in the best-lighted space on Surf Avenue, where Constance held him while he received his reward.

“It’s a new game,” Johnny confessed, though blushing furiously.  “I’ll be ‘it’ any time you say.”

“Once is enough,” asserted Winnie, entirely unruffled.  “Your face is scratchy.  Come on, you folks; I’m going to buy you a dinner.”  And, leading the way into the first likely-looking place, she ordered a comprehensive meal which started with pickles and finished with pie.

Her party was a huge success, for it laughed its way from one end of Coney to the other.  It rode on wooden horses; on wobbling camels; in whirling tubs; on iron-billowed oceans; down trestled mountains; through painted caves—­on everything which had rollers, or runners, or supporting arms.  It withstood shocks and bumps and dislocations and dizziness—­and it ran squarely into Heinrich Schnitt!

Three tables, placed end to end at the rail of a Shoot-the-Chutes lake, were required to accommodate Heinrich Schnitt’s party.  First, there was Heinrich himself, white as wax and stoop-shouldered and extremely clean.  At the other end of the table sat Mama Schnitt, who bulged, and always had butter on her thumb.  To the right of Heinrich sat Grossmutter Schnitt, in a black sateen dress, with her back bowed like a new moon and her little old face withered like a dried white rose.