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Page 59
[Illustration: In that instant Bean read the flapper's look, the look
she had puzzled him with from their first meeting]
And in that instant Bean read the flapper's look, the look she had
puzzled him with from their first meeting. It was like finally
understanding an oft-heard phrase in a foreign tongue. How luminous that
look was now! The simple look of proud and assured and most determined
ownership! It lay quietly on her face now as always. It was the look he
must have bestowed on his shell the first time he saw it. Ownership!
"--the point is," the Demon was saying terribly, "I don't believe in
long engagements."
He had once been persuaded, yielding out of spineless bravado, to
descend the shaft of a mine in a huge bucket. The sensations of that
plunge were now reproduced. He looked up to the far circle of light that
ever diminished as he went down and down.
"I don't believe in them either," said the flapper firmly. "They're
perfectly no good."
"I never did believe in 'em," he heard himself saying. And added with
firmness equal to the flapper's, "Silly!" He was wondering if they would
ever pull him to the surface again; if the rope would break.
"Just what I think," chanted the flapper. "Silly, and then some!"
"Then some!" repeated the male being in helpless, terrified
corroboration.
"Won't he ever come?" queried the Demon. "Oh, here he is!"
The waiter was neatly removing tea and things from the tray. Bean
recalled how on that other occasion he had fearfully believed the earth
would close upon him, how hope revived as he was precariously drawn
upward, and what a novel view the earth's fair surface presented when he
again stood firmly upon it.
It was the waiter who raised him from this other abyss where he had been
like to perish, the waiter and the things, including tea: plates, forks,
napkins, cups and saucers, tea and hot water, jam, biscuit, toast. There
was something particularly reassuring about that plate of nicely matched
triangles of buttered toast. It spoke of a sane and orderly world where
you were never taken off your feet.
"How many lumps?" demanded the pouring flapper.
"Just as you like; I'm not fussy," he answered.
This was untrue. His preference in the matter was decided, but he could
not remember what it was. Afterward he knew that he did not take sugar
in his tea, but the flapper had sweetened it with three lumps. Grandma
again addressed him, engaging his difficult attention with a brandished
fragment of toast.
"I can't imagine how you were ever mad enough to think of it," she said,
"but you were. I give you credit for that. And just let me tell you that
you've won a treasure. Of course, I don't say you won't find her
difficult now and then, but you mustn't be too overbearing; give in a
bit now and then; 't won't hurt you. Remember she's got a will of her
own, as well as you have. Don't try to ride rough-shod--"
"Oh, we've settled all _that_," broke in the flapper. "Haven't we?"
"We've settled all that," said Bean, grateful for the solid feel of a
cup in his fingers.
"Don't be too domineering, that's all," warned the Demon. "She wouldn't
put up with it."
"I understand all _that_," insisted Bean, resolutely seizing a fork for
which he had no use. "I can look ahead!"
He began hurriedly to eat toast, hoping it would seem that he had more
to say but was too hungry to say it.
"I know _you_," persisted the Demon. "Brow-beating, bound to have your
own way, and, after all, she's nothing but a child."
"I'll _want_ him to have his own way," declared the child. "I'll see
that he just perfectly gets it, too!"
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