d.

"You don't seem to be alive to the shock I'm giving you," protested
Polly. "Really, girlie, I have some big news for you. Johnny Gamble has
finished the making of his million!"

"I wish that word million had never been invented!" suddenly flared
Constance. "I'm tired of hearing it. The very thought of it makes me
ill." How did Polly come to know it first?

"I wouldn't care what they'd call it if it would only buy as much,"
returned Polly, still good-naturedly. "And when a regular man like
Johnny Gamble hustles out and gets one, just so he can ask to marry
you, you ought to give a perfectly vulgar exhibition of joy!"

"You have put it very nicely," responded Constance. "If it would only
buy as much! Do you know that my name is seldom mentioned except in
connection with a million dollars? I must either marry one man or lose
a million, or marry another who has made a million for that purpose."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" charged Polly. She glared at
Constance a moment, bursting with more indignant things to say; but
there were so many of them that they choked her in their attempted
egress, and she swished angrily back to the lawn party, exploding most
of the way.

At just this inopportune moment Johnny Gamble found his way into the
peaceful library.

"Well, it's across!" he joyously confided, forgetting in his happiness
the rebuffs of the day. "I have that million!" and he approached her
with such an evident determination of making an exuberant proposal then
and there that Constance could have shrieked. "I congratulate you," she
informed him as she hastily rose. "You deserve it, I am sure. Kindly
excuse me, won't you?" and she sailed out of the room.

Johnny, feeling all awkward joints like a calf, dropped his sailor
straw hat, and Constance heard it rolling after her. With an effort she
kept herself from running, knowing full well that if that hat touched
her skirt she would drop!

Johnny looked at the hat in dumb reproach, but when he left the room he
walked widely round it. He dared not touch it.

"Ow, I say, Mr. Gamble," drawled Eugene, passing him in the doorway,
"we've picked out the puppy."

While Johnny was still smarting from the burden of that information and
wondering what spot of the globe would be most endurable at the present
moment, Courtney came through the hall on some hostly errand.

"Say, Johnny," he blundered in an excess of well-meaning, "why don't
you rest from business