Let it not be thought, however, that his new growth showed no result above ground.  He purchased and wore that very morning a cravat not entirely red, it is true, but one distinguished by a narrow red stripe on a backing of bronze, which the clerk who manoeuvred the sale assured him was “tasty.”  Also he commanded a suit of clothes of a certain light check in which the Bean of uninspired days would never have braved public scrutiny.  Such were the immediate and actual fruits of Ram-tah’s influence.

There were other effects, perhaps more subtle.  Performing his accustomed work for Breede that day, he began to study his employer from the kingly, or Ram-tah, point of view.  He conceived that Breede in the time of Ram-tah would have been a steward, a keeper of the royal granaries, a dependable accountant; a good enough man in his lowly station, but one who could never rise.  His laxness in the manner of dress was seen to be ingrained, an incurable defect of soul.  In the time of Ram-tah he had doubtless worn the Egyptian equivalent for detached cuffs, and he would be doing the like for a thousand incarnations to come.  All too plainly Breede’s Karmic future promised little of interest.  His degree of ascent in the human scale was hardly perceptible.

Bean was pleased at this thought.  It left him in a fine glow of superiority and sharpened his relish for the mad jest of their present attitudes—­a jest demanding that he seem to be Breede’s subordinate.

Naturally, this was a situation that would not long endure.  It was too preposterous.  Money came not only to kings but to the kingly.  He troubled as little about details as would have any other king.  Were there not steel kings, and iron kings, railway kings, oil kings—­money kings?  He thought it was not unlikely that he would first engage the world’s notice as an express king.  He had received those fifty shares of stock from Aunt Clara and regarded them as a presage of his coming directorship.  But he took no pride in this thought.  Baseball was to be his life work.  He would own one major-league team, at least; perhaps three or four.  He would be known as the baseball king, and the world would forget his petty triumphs as a director of express.

He deemed it significant that the present directors of that same Federal Express Company one day held a meeting in Breede’s office.  It showed, he thought, how life “worked around.”  The thing was coming to his very door.  With considerable interest he studied the directors as they came and went.  Most of them, like Breede, were men whose wealth the daily press had a habit of estimating in rotund millions.  He regarded them knowingly, thinking he could tell them something that might surprise them.  But they passed him, all unheeding, moneyed-looking men of good round girth, who seemed to have found the dollar-game worth while.