It was, though, pretty light conduct on her part.  It was possible that he would not see her again.  Perhaps a baggage like that would already have forgotten him; would have treated the thing as trivial, an incident to laugh about, even to regale her intimates with.  Probably he had done nothing more than make a fool of himself as usual.  Votes for women, indeed!  He thought they should first learn how to behave properly with young men who weren’t expecting things of that sort.

“—­this ’mount’ll then become ‘vailable f’r purpose shortenin’ line an’ reducin’ heavy grades,” dictated the unconscious father of the baggage.

“I kissed that smug-faced little brat of yours last night,” wrote Bean immediately thereafter.  He didn’t care.  He would put the thing down plainly, right under Breede’s nose.

“With ’creased freight earnin’s these ’provements may be ‘spected t’ pay f’r ’emselves,” continued Breede.

“And I don’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing over again,” Bean slipped in skilfully.

He winced to think he might some day have a daughter of his own that would “carry on” just so with young men who would be all right if they were only let alone.  He found new comfort in the reflection that his first-born would be a boy—­to grow up and be the idol of a nation.

But a little later he was again thinking of her as “Chubbins,” wishing he had called her that, wishing she had stayed longer out in the scented night—­the wonderful smoothness of her yielding cheek!  Her little tricks of voice and manner came back to him, her quick little patting of Grandma’s back at unexpected moments, the tilting of her head like a listening bird, that inexplicable look as her eyes enveloped him, a tiny scar at her temple, mark of an early fall from her pony.

He became sentimental to a maudlin degree.  She would go on in her shallow way of life, smashing windows, voting, leading perfectly decent young men to do things they never meant to do; but he, the tender, the true, the ever-earnest, he would not recover from the wound that frail one had so carelessly inflicted.  He would be a changed man, with hair prematurely graying at the temples, like Gordon Dane’s, hiding his hurt under a mask of light cynicism to all but persons of superior insight.  The heartless quip, the mad jest on his lips!  And years afterward, a deeply serious and very beautiful woman would divine his sorrow and win him back to his true self.

The wedding!  The drive from the church!  The carriage is halted by a street crowd.  A stalwart policeman appears.  He has just arrested two women, confirmed window-smashers—­Grandma, the Demon, and the flapper.  The flapper gives him one long look, then bows her head.  She sees all the nobility she has missed.  Serve her right, too!

Noon came and he was about to leave the office.  He was still the changed man of quip and jest.  Desperately he jested with old Metzeger, who was regretfully, it seemed, relinquishing his adored ledgers from Saturday noon until Monday morning.