It took Winnie five minutes to chase him down, and she caught him, with the assistance of Constance, in the thickest crowd and in the best-lighted space on Surf Avenue, where Constance held him while he received his reward. 

 "It's a new game," Johnny confessed, though blushing furiously. "I'll be 'it' any time you say." 

 "Once is enough," asserted Winnie, entirely unruffled. "Your face is scratchy. Come on, you folks; I'm going to buy you a dinner." And, leading the way into the first likely-looking place, she ordered a comprehensive meal which started with pickles and finished with pie. 

 Her party was a huge success, for it laughed its way from one end of Coney to the other. It rode on wooden horses; on wobbling camels; in whirling tubs; on iron-billowed oceans; down trestled mountains; through painted caves—on everything which had rollers, or runners, or supporting arms. It withstood shocks and bumps and dislocations and dizziness—and it ran squarely into Heinrich Schnitt! 

 Three tables, placed end to end at the rail of a Shoot-the-Chutes lake, were required to accommodate Heinrich Schnitt's party. First, there was Heinrich himself, white as wax and stoop-shouldered and extremely clean. At the other end of the table sat Mama Schnitt, who bulged, and always had butter on her thumb. To the right of Heinrich sat Grossmutter Schnitt, in a black sateen dress, with her back bowed like a new moon and her little old face withered like a dried white rose. 

 Next sat young Heinrich Schnitt and his wife, Milly, who was very fashionable and wore a lace shirt-waist—though she was not so fashionable that she was ashamed of any of the rest of the party. 

 Between young Heinrich and Milly sat their little Henry and little Rosa and little Milly and the baby, all stiffly starched and round-faced and red-cheeked. Besides these were Carrie, whose husband was dead; and Carrie's Louis; and Willie Schnitt with Flora Kraus, whom he was to marry two years from last Easter; and Lulu, who was pretty, and went with American boys in the face of broken-hearted opposition. 

 In front of each member of the party—except the baby—was a glass of beer and a "hot dog", and down the center of the long table were three pasteboard shoe boxes, full of fine lunch, flanking Flora Kraus' fancy basket of potato salad and fried chicken, as well prepared as any those Schnitts could put up. 

 It was Constance who, walking quietly with Johnny, discovered 

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