Bean knew Cassidy by that time, and his inspection of the apartment was perfunctory.  Cassidy would be a buckler and shield to the dog, in his absence.  Cassidy would love him.  The dog, on his spread forefeet, touched his chest to the ground and with ears erect, eyes agleam, and inciting soprano gurgles invited the world to a mad, mad, game.

Cassidy only said, “Aw, g’wan! Would you, now!” But each word was a caress.  And Cassidy became Bean’s janitor.

He moved the next day, bringing his effects in a cab.  The cabman professed never to have seen a dog as “classy” as Nap, and voiced the cheerful prophecy that in any bench show he would make them all look like mutts.  He received a gratuity of fifty cents in addition to the outrageous fee he demanded for coming so far north, although he had the appearance of one who uses liquor to excess, and could probably not have qualified as a judge of dogs.

Bean’s installation, under the guidance of Cassidy, was effected without delay.  The apartment proved to be entirely suitable for a king in abeyance.  There was a bedroom, a parlour, an alcove off the latter that Cassidy said was the libr’y an’ a good place f’r a dawg t’ sleep, and beyond this was a feminine diminutive of a kitchen, prettily called a “kitchenette.”

Bean felt like an insect in such a labyrinth of a place.  He forgot where he put things, and then, overcome by the vastness and number of rooms, forgot what he was looking for, losing himself in an abstracted and fruitless survey of the walls.  He must buy things to hang on the walls, especially over certain stains on the wall of the parlour, or throne-room, to which in the heat of battle, doubtless, certain items of the late Dutch lunch had been misdirected.

But he knew what to buy.  Etchings.  In the magazine stories he read, aside from the very rich characters who had galleries of old masters, there were two classes:  one without taste that littered its rooms with expensive but ill-advised bric-a-brac; and one that wisely contented itself with “a few good etchings.”  He bought a few good etchings at a department store for $1.97 each, and felt irreproachable.  And when he had arranged his books—­about Napoleon I and ancient Egypt—­he was ready to play the game of living.  Mrs. Cassidy “did” his rooms, and Cassidy already showed the devotion of an old and tried retainer.  The Cassidys made him feel feudal.

At night, while Nap fought a never-decided battle with a sofa-pillow, or curled asleep on the couch with a half-inch of silly pink tongue projecting from between his teeth, he read of Egypt, the black land, where had been the first great people of the ancient world.  He devoured the fruit of the lotus, the tamarisk, the pomegranate, and held cats to be sacred. (Funny, that feeling he had always had about cats—­afraid of them even in childhood—­it had survived in his being!) There he had lived and reigned in that flat valley of the Nile, between borders of low mountains, until his name had been put down in the book of the dead, and he had gone for a time to the hall of Osiris.