"Take--mornings?"

"For breakfast, silly! Because I think it's best for you to take just eggs and toast; a little fruit of course; not all that meat and things."

"Oh, yes, of course; eggs and--things. Never want much."

"Well, all right, I just perfectly knew you'd see it that way. I'm making up lists. Tell me, do you like a panelled dining-room, you know, fumed oak, or something?"

"Only kind I'd ever have."

"I knew you would. What are you doing all the time?"

"Oh, me? I'm getting things into shape. You see, I have an idea--"

"Don't you buy the least little thing until I know. We want to be sure everything harmonizes and I've just perfectly got everything in my head the way it will be."

"That's right; that's the only way."

"You didn't say anything about--you know--to poor old Pops, did you?"

"Why, no. I didn't. You see he's been pretty much thinking about other things all day, and I--"

"Well, that's right. I was afraid you'd be just perfectly impatient. But you leave it all to me. I'll manage. It's the dearest joke! I may not tell them for two or three days. Every time I get alone I just perfectly giggle myself into spasms. Isn't it the funniest?"

"Ha, ha, ha, ha! I should think it was." He was fearfully hoping her keen sense of humour might continue to rule.

"We _do_, don't we?"

"Do what?"

"_You_ know, stupid!"

"Yes, _yes_ indeed! We just perfectly _do_!"

"More than any two people ever did before, don't we?"

"Well, I should think so; and then some."

"I knew you'd feel that way. Well, good-bye!"

He could fancy her giving the double nod as she hung up the receiver.

During the ride uptown he talked large with a voluble gentleman who had finished his evening paper and who wished to recite its leading editorial from memory as something of his own. They used terms like "the tired business man," "increased cost of living," "small investor," "the common people," and "enemies of the Public Good." The man was especially bitter against the Wall Street ring, and remarked that any one wishing to draw a lesson from history need look no farther back than the French Revolution. The signs were to be observed on every hand.

Bean felt a little guilty, though he tried to carry it off. Was he not one of that same Wall Street ring? He pictured himself as a tired business man eating boiled eggs of a morning in a dining-room panelled with fumed oak, the flapper across the table in some little old rag. He thought it sounded pretty luxurious--like a betrayal of the common people. Still he had to follow his destiny. You couldn't get around that.

He stood a long time before Ram-tah that night, grateful for the lesson he had drawn from him in the afternoon. Back there among those fierce-eyed directors, badgered by the most objectionable of them, nerving himself to say presently that he could imagine nothing of less consequence, there had come before his eyes the inspiring face of the wise and good king. But most unaccountably, as he gazed, it seemed to him that the great Ram-tah had opened those long-closed eyes; opened them full for a moment; then allowed the left eye to close swiftly.

XI

The day began with placid routine. Breede did his accustomed two-hours'

monologue. And no one molested Bean. No one appeared to know that he was other than he seemed, and that big things were going forward. Tully ignored him. Markham, who had the day before called him "Old man!"

whistled obliviously as they brushed past each other in the hall. No directors called him in to tell him that would never do with _them_.

He was grateful for the lull. He couldn't be "stirred up" that way every day. And he needed to gather strength against Breede when Breede should discover that exquisite joke of the flapper's. He suspected that the flapper wouldn't find it funny to keep the thing from poor old Pops more than a few days longer.

"I'll be drawing my last pay next Sat.u.r.day," he told himself.

"Telephone for Boston Baked," called the office-boy wit, late in the afternoon.

Bulger looked sympathetic.

"Same trouble I have," he confided as Bean pa.s.sed him, "Take 'em on once and they bother the life out of you."

"You'd never believe," came the voice of the flapper. "I found the darlingest old sideboard with claw-feet yesterday over on Fourth Avenue.

He wants two hundred and eighty, but they're all robbers, and I just perfectly mean to make him come down five or ten dollars. Every little counts. You leave it to me."

"Sure! You fix it all up!"

"And maybe we won't want fumed oak in the dining-room--maybe a rich mahogany stain. Would that suit? I'm only thinking of you."

"I'll leave all that to you; you'll perfectly well manage."

"I just perfectly darling well knew you'd say that; and I'm sending you down a car--"

"A what? Car?" This was even more alarming than the darling old sideboard.

"Just a little old last year's car. Poor old Pops would give it to me now if I asked him--but it's just as well to have it away in case Moms could ever make him change his mind, only of course she perfectly well can't do anything of the sort. But anyway I'm sending it to that shop around the corner in the street below you, and they'll hold it there to your order. You never can tell; we might need it suddenly some time, and anyway you ought to have it, don't you see, because I'm just perfectly giving it to you this minute, and you can run about in it with that dearest dog, and it's the very first thing I ever gave you, isn't it?

I'll always remember it just for that. It will do us all right for a few weeks, until we can look around. And there never was any one before, was there? You just needn't answer; you'd have to say 'No,' and anyway Granny says a young--you know what--should never ask silly questions about what happened before she met him, because it perfectly well makes rows, and I know she's right, but there never _was_, was there, and no matter anyway, because it's settled forever now, and we _do_, don't we?

My! but I'm excited. Don't forget what I said about the bra.s.s andirons and the curtains for your den. Goo'-bye."

"Huh! yes, of course not!" said Bean, but the flapper had gone.

Back at the typewriter he tried to collect his memories of her message: sideboard with darling feet of some kind, no fumed oak, perhaps--bra.s.s andirons, curtains for his den. He couldn't recall what she had said about those. Maybe it would come to him. He wished he had told her that he already had a few good etchings. And the car! That was plain in his mind--little old last year's thing--at that shop around the corner. Did one say "garrash" or "garrige"? He heard both.

Anyway, he owned a motor car; you couldn't get around that. Maybe Bulger wouldn't open his eyes if he knew it. Bulger was an authority on cars, and spoke in detail of their strange insides with the aplomb of a man who has dissected them for years. He had violent disputes with the second bookkeeper about which was the best car for the money. The bookkeeper actually owned a motorcycle, or would, after he had paid five dollars a month a few more times, but Bulger would never allow this minor contrivance to be brought into their discussions. Bulger was intolerant of anything costing under five thou'--eat you up with repairs.

Bean longed to approach Bulger and say:

"Some dame, that! Just sent me a little old last year's car."

But he knew this would never do. Bulger would not only tell him why the car was of an inferior make, but he would want to borrow it to take a certain party, or maybe the gang, out for a spin, and get everybody killed or arrested or something. Bulger dressed fearlessly; no one with eyes could deny that; but he was tactless. Better keep that car under cover.

At seven-thirty that evening, with Nap on a leash, he strolled into the garage. He carried the yellow stick and the gloves, and he was prepared to make all sorts of a nasty row if they tried to tell him the car wasn't there, or so much as hinted that he might not be the right party.

He knew how to deal with those automobile sharks.