“Give Beauty my card and tell her I’ll be back,” directed Johnny with a friendly glance in the direction of Beauty’s summer residence.  “Didn’t you say something this morning about a crowd of setter puppies?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the dog expert proudly.  “Several of the gentlemen have been down to see them, but the day has been so hot I didn’t care to bring them out.  It’s cool enough now, sir, if you’d like to see them.”

“I’ll be back, in five minutes,” returned Johnny hastily.  “I’ll say hello to Beauty first.”

Beauty barked and capered when she was let out, and expressed her entire approval of Johnny in fluent dog language, looking after him reproachfully when he hurried away.

Johnny first begged a puppy of Courtney, then he brought Eugene Wobbles and Tommy Wobbles and Billy and Cecil and Reggie Wobbles down in turns to pick it out for him.  Each of the Wobbleses was still there, deciding, when he brought another.  When the last Wobbles, including their friend Birchard, was in the inclosure Johnny locked the gate and sent Loring on a brisk errand.  That energetic commercial attorney returned in a very few minutes, laden with some papers and writing materials, and followed by a servant carrying a wicker table.

“Gentlemen,” said Johnny in a quite oratorical tone of voice, “suppose we talk business.”

The assembled Wobbleses turned in gasping surprise from the violent family dispute over the puppies.

“Upon my soul, this is a most extraordinary thing!” exclaimed Eugene, looking about him in amazement.  “Why, the whole blooming family is here, even Tommy.  I say, Tommy, it’s perfectly imbecile, with all due respect to you, to prefer that little beggar with the white star.”

“I’ll back him for a hundred pounds before any official committee,” indignantly quavered Tommy, feeling in all the wrong pockets for his betting-book.

“Gentlemen,” interposed Johnny most crudely indeed, “I am here to repeat my offer of three million dollars, cash, for your Bronx property; one-half million dollars to-day, one million dollars next Saturday, May twentieth, and the remaining million and a half the following Saturday, May twenty-seventh, title to remain vested in you until the entire amount is paid.  Just to show that I mean business I have brought each of you a certified check for one hundred thousand dollars.”  And he distributed them like diplomas to a class.

Tommy Wobbles, startled to find his toupee on straight, examined his check with much doubt.  “I say, you know,” he expostulated, “this can’t be quite regular!”

“Why not?” inquired Johnny.

“Well—­er—­it’s so very precipitate,” responded Tommy, putting the check in his pocket and taking it out again and folding and unfolding it with uncertain fingers.  “No time for deliberation and dignity and such rot, you know.”

“An advance cash payment of half a million dollars is so full of dignity that its shoes squeak,” announced Johnny.  “As to delay, I don’t see any reason for it.  You want to sell the property, don’t you?”