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Page 68
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 Saturday," 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 passed 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 brass andirons
and the curtains for your den. Goo'-bye."
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