"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!"