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Page 42
He had wished they would go before he finished the last letter, but they
sat on, and Grandma filled the room with smoke.
"Now he's through!" proclaimed the flapper.
"How old are you?" asked Grandma, as Bean arose nervously from the
machine.
He tried jauntily to make it appear that he must "count up."
"Let me see. I'm--twenty-three last Tuesday."
The old lady nodded approvingly, as if this were something to his
credit.
"Got any vicious habits?"
Bean weakly began an answer intended to be facetious, and yet leave much
to be inferred regarding his habits. But the Demon would have none of
this.
"Smoke?"
"No!"
"Drink?"
"No!" He desperately wondered if she would know where to stop.
"How's your health? Ever been sick much?"
"I can't remember. I had lumbago when I was seven."
"Humph! Gamble, play cards, bet on races, go around raising cain with a
lot of young devils at night?"
"No, I don't," said Bean, with a hint of sullen defiance. He wanted to
add: "And I don't go round voting and breaking windows, either," but he
was not equal to this.
"Well, I don't know--" She deliberated, adjusting one of her many puffs
of gray hair, and gazing dreamily at a thread of smoke that ascended
from her cigarette. She seemed to be wondering whether or not she ought
to let him off this time. "Well, I don't know. It looks to me as if you
were too good to be true."
She rose and tossed her cigarette out of the window. He thought he was
freed, but at the door she turned suddenly upon him once more.
"What in time _have_ you done? Haven't you ever had any fun?"
But she waited for no answer.
"I knew she'd admire you," said the flapper. "Isn't she a perfectly old
dear?"
"Oh, yes!" gasped Bean. "Yes, yes, yes, indeed! She is _that_!"
VII
Bean had once attended a magician's entertainment and there suffered
vicariously the agony endured by one of his volunteer assistants.
Suavely the entertainer begged the help of "some kind gentleman from the
audience." He was insistent, exerting upon the reluctant ones the
pressure of his best platform manner.
When the pause had grown embarrassing, a shamed looking man slouched
forward from an aisle seat amid hearty cheers. He ascended the carpeted
runway from aisle to stage, stumbled over footlights and dropped his
hat. Then the magician harried him to the malicious glee of the
audience. He removed playing-cards, white rabbits and articles of
feminine apparel from beneath the coat of his victim. He seated him in a
chair that collapsed. He gave him a box to hold and shocked him
electrically. He missed his watch and discovered it in the abused man's
pocket. And when the ordeal was over the recovered hat was found to
contain guinea-pigs. The kind gentleman from the audience had been shown
to be transcendently awkward, brainless, and to have a mania for petty
thievery. With burning face and falling glance, he had stumbled back to
his seat, where a lady who had before exhibited the public manner of
wife to husband toward him, now pretended that he was an utter and
offensive stranger.
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