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Page 103
"First we go see a ball game," he said.
The flapper astounded him.
"I don't think they have it over here--baseball," she observed.
No baseball? She must be crazy. He rang the bell.
The capable Swiss entered. In less than ten minutes he was able to
convince the amazed American that baseball was positively not played on
the continent of Europe. It was monstrous. It put a different aspect
upon Europe.
"Makes no difference where we go, then," announced Bean. "Just any
little old last year's place. We'll 'lope."
"Ripping," applauded the flapper, with brightening eyes.
"Hurry and dress. I'll get a little old car and we'll beat it before
they get back. No time for trunk; take bag."
Down in the office he found they made nothing of producing little old
cars for the right people. The car was there even as he was taking the
precaution to secure a final assurance from the manager that Paris did
not by any chance play London that day.
The two bags were installed in the ready car; then a radiant flapper
beside an amateur upstart. The driver desired instructions.
"_Ally, ally!_" directed Bean, waving a vague but potent hand.
"We've done it," rejoiced the flapper. "Serve the perfectly old taggers
good and plenty right!"
Bean lifted a final gaze to the laurel-crowned Believer. He knew that
Believer's secret now.
"What a stunning tie," exclaimed the flapper. "It just perfectly does
something to you."
"'S little old last year's tie," said her husband carelessly.
* * * * *
At six-thirty that evening they were resting on a balcony overlooking
the garden of a hotel at Versailles. Back of them in the little parlour
a waiter was setting a most companionable small table for two. Such
little sounds as he made were thrilling. They liked the hotel much. Its
management seemed to have been expecting them ever since the building's
erection, and to have reserved precisely that nest for them.
They had been "doing" the palace. A little self-conscious, in their
first free solitude, they had agreed that the palace would be
instructive. Through interminable galleries they had gone, inspecting
portraits of the dead who had made and marred French history ... led on by
a guide whose amiable delusion it was that he spoke English. The flapper
had been chiefly exercised in comparing the palace, to its disadvantage,
with a certain house to be surrounded on all sides by scenery and
embellished with perfectly patent laundry tubs.
The flapper sighed in contentment, now.
"We needn't ever do it again," she said. "How they ever made it in that
old barn--"
Bean had occupied himself in thinking it was funny about kings. To have
been born a king meant not so much after all. He still dwelt upon it as
they sat looking down into the shadowed garden.
"There was that last one," he said musingly. "Born as much a king as
any ... and look what they did to him. Better man than the other two
before him ... they had 'habits' enough, and he was decent. But he
couldn't make them believe in him. He couldn't have believed in
himself very hard. His picture looks like a man I know in New York
named Cassidy .. always puttering around, dead serious about
something that doesn't matter at all. You got to bluff people, and
this poor old dub didn't know how ... so they clipped his head off
for it. Two or three times a good bluff would have saved him."
"No bath, no furnace," murmured the flapper. "That perfectly reminds me,
soon as we get back--"
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