Close told the driver to go on.  Before Ersten alighted at the terminal, Johnny made one more attempt upon him.

“If a majority of your best customers insisted that they liked the new shop better would you look at the other place?” he asked.

“My customers don’t run my business either!” he puffed.

“Good-by,” stated Mr. Kurzerhosen, who had been looking steadily at the opposite side of the street throughout the journey.  “I thank you.”

Close stared at Johnny in silence for a moment after their guests had gone.

“I told you so,” he said.  “You’ll have to give him up as a bad job.”

“He’s beginning to look like a good job,” asserted Johnny.  “He can be handled like wax, but you have to melt him.  Schnitt’s the real reason.  Do you know Schnitt?”

“I am happy to say I do not,” laughed Close.  “One like Ersten is enough.”

“Somebody must lead me to him,” declared Johnny.  “I’m going to see Schnitt in the morning.  I’d call to-night if I didn’t have to be the big works at a Coney Island dinner party.”

“I don’t see how Schnitt can help you,” puzzled Close.

“He’s the tack in the tire.  I can see what happened as well as if I had been there.  Ersten knew he ought to move.  Lofty tried to buy him and Schnitt tried to force him.  Then he got his Dutch up.  Schnitt left on account of it.  Now Ersten won’t do anything.”

“You can’t budge him an inch,” prophesied the banker.  “I know him.”

“I’ll coax him,” stated Johnny determinedly.  “There’s a profit in him, and I have to have it!”

CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH WINNIE CHAPERONS THE ENTIRE PARTY TO CONEY ISLAND

At the last minute, Aunt Pattie Boyden fortunately contracted a toothache—­and the Coney Island party was compelled to go unchaperoned.  They tried to be regretful and sympathetic as the six of them climbed into the big touring car, but Ashley Loring found them a solace.

“Never you mind,” he soothed them—­“Polly will chaperon us.”

“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.