"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" reproached Loring with a laugh.
"All right," agreed Johnny accommodatingly. "I'm used to that anyhow. For one thing, I'm ashamed of being such a sucker. That old partner of mine not only stung me for every cent I could scrape together for two years, but actually had the nerve to try to sell the big tract of land we irrigated with money."
"To sell it!" exclaimed Loring in surprise.
"That's all," returned Johnny. "He went to the Western Developing Company with it two months ago and had them so worked up that they looked into the title. They even sent a man out there to investigate."
"Flivver, I suppose?" guessed Loring.
"Rank," corroborated Johnny. "Washburn, of the Western Developing, was telling me about it yesterday. He said his man took one look at the land and came back offering to go six blocks out of his way on a busy Monday to see Collaton hung."
"We'd get up a party," commented Loring dryly, and Johnny hurried away to the offices of his Bronx concern.
He was a very unhappy Johnny these days and had but little joy in his million. If Constance did not care for it, nor for him, the fun was all gone out of everything. Work was his only relief, and he worked like an engine.
On one day, however, he was careful to do no labor, and that day was Friday, May nineteenth; Constance's birthday, and he had long planned to make that a gala occasion.
On the evening preceding he called at the house, but Aunt Pattie Boyden, who was more than anxious to have Constance marry the second cousin of Lord Yawpingham, told him with poorly concealed satisfaction that Constance was too ill to see him. He imagined that he knew what that meant, nevertheless, on the following morning he sent Constance a tremendous bouquet and went down into the midst of the crowds at Coney Island, where of all places in the world he could be most alone and most gloomy.