“You just perfectly don’t leave this house again!”

“Not going to,” he answered guiltily.  “Looking to see what size hat I wear.  Fumed eggs,” he concluded triumphantly.

He was not again left alone.  The waster came back and supposed he would do some golfing “over across.”

Bean loathed golf and gathered the strange power to say so.

“Sooner be a mail-carrier than a golf-player,” he answered stoutly.  “Looks more fun, anyway.”

“My word!” exclaimed the waster, “aren’t you even keen on watching it?”

“Sooner watch a lot of Italians tearing up a street-car track,” Bean persisted.

“Oh, come!” protested the waster.

“Like to have another fumed egg,” said Bean.

“You’ve had one too many,” declared the waster, knowing that no sober man could speak thus of the sport of kings.

Grandma, the Demon, entered and portentously shook hands with him.  She seemed to have discovered that marriage was very serious.

“Fumed eggs,” said Bean, regarding her shrewdly.

“What?” demanded Grandma.

“Fumed eggs, hundred p’cent efficient,” he declared stoutly.

The Demon eyed him more closely.

“My grandmother smoked, too,” said Bean, “but I never went in for it much.”

“U-u-u-mmm!” said the Demon.  It was to be seen that she felt puzzled.

Breede slunk into the room, garbed in an unaccustomed frock coat.  He went through the form of shaking hands with Bean.

Bean felt a sudden necessity to tell Breede a lot of things.  He wished to confide in the man.

“Principle of the thing’s all I cared about,” he began.  “Anybody make money that wants to be a Wall Street crook and take it away from the tired business man.  What I want to be is one of the idle rich ... only not idle much of the time, you know.  Good major league club for mine.  Been looking the ground over; sound ’vestment; keep you out of bad company, lots time to read good books.”

“Hanh!  Wha’s ’at?” exploded Breede.

“Fumed eggs,” said Bean, feeling witty.  He affected to laugh at his own jest as he perceived that the mourning mother had entered the room.  Breede drew cautiously away from him.  Mrs. Breede nodded to him bravely.

He mentioned the name of the world’s greatest pitcher, with an impulse to take the woman down a bit.

“Get our shirts same place; he’s going to have a suit just like this—­no, like another one I have in that little old steamer trunk.”

He was aware that they all eyed him too closely.  The waster winked at him.  Then he found himself shaking hands with a soothing old gentleman in clerical garb who called him his young friend and said that this was indeed a happy moment.

The three Breedes and the waster stood apart, studying him queerly.  He was feeling an embarrassed need to make light conversation, and he was still conscious of that strange power to make it.  He was going to tell the old gentleman, whose young friend he was, that fumed eggs were a hundred p’cent efficient.