The most of them, he was glad to note, were in dress slightly more advanced than Breede.  One of them, a small but important-looking old gentleman with a purple face and a white parted beard, became on the instant Bean’s ideal for correctness.  From his gray spats to his top-hat, he was “dignified yet different,” although dressing, for example, in a more subdued key than Bulger.  Yet he was a constantly indignant looking old gentleman, and Bean guessed that he would be a trouble-maker on any board of directors.  It seemed to him that he would like to take this person’s place on the board; oust him in spite of his compelling garments.

And Breede would know then that he was something more than a machine.  On the whole, he felt sorry for Breede at times.  Perhaps he would let him have a little of the baseball stock.

So he sat and dreamed of his great past and of his brilliant future.  Perhaps, after all, Bean as the blind poet had been not the least authentic of Balthasar’s visions.

And inevitably he encountered the flapper in this dreaming; “Chubbins,” he liked to call her.  More and more he was suspecting that Tommy Hollins was not the man for Chubbins.  He would prefer to see her the bride of an older man, two or three, or even four, years older, who was settled in life.  A young girl—­a young girl’s parents—­couldn’t be too careful!

He was not for many days at a time deprived of the sight of the young girl in question.  She had formed a habit of calling for her father at the close of his day’s hard work.  And she did not wait for him in the big car; she sat in his office, where, after she had inquired solicitously about his poor foot, she settled her gaze upon Bean.  And Bean no longer evaded this gaze.  She was a clever, attractive little thing and he liked her well.  He thought of things he would tell her for her own good at the first opportunity.

He wondered guiltily when Breede’s next attack might be expected, and he had a lively impression that the flapper, too, was more curious than alarmed about this.  He seemed to feel that she was actually wishing to be told things by him for her own good.

However that may be, his next summons to the country place came without undue delay, and it is not at all improbable that Breede fell a victim to what the terminology of one of our most popular cults identifies as “malicious animal magnetism.”

On this occasion he was not oppressed by those attentions which the flapper and Grandma, the Demon, still bestowed upon him.  Where he had once fled, he now put himself in the way of them.  He listened with admirably simulated interest to Grandma’s account of the suffrage play for which she was rehearsing.  She was to appear in the mob scene.  He was certain she would lend vivacity to any mob.  But he was glad that the flapper was not to appear.  Voting and smashing windows were bad enough.

He tried at first to talk to the flapper about Tommy Hollins, whom he airily designated as “that Hollins boy”.  It seemed to be especially needed, because the Hollins boy arrived after breakfast every day and left only in the late afternoon.  But the flapper declined nevertheless to consider him as meat for serious converse.