“Say, I want to borrow nineteen thousand eleven hundred and eighty-nine dollars and thirty-seven cents until the sixteenth at seven minutes to eleven.”

Old Metzeger repeated the numbers accurately.  He looked wistful, but he knew it was a jest.

“Telephone for Boston Bean!” cried an office boy, dryly affecting to be unconscious of his wit.

He rushed nervously for the booth.  No one in the great city had ever before found occasion to telephone him.  He thought of Professor Balthasar.  Balthasar would warn him to fly at once; that all was discovered.

He held the receiver to his ear and managed a husky “Hello!”

At first there were many voices, mostly indignant:  “I want the manager!” “Get off the line!” “A hundred and nine and three quarters!” “That you, Howard?  Say, this is—­” “Get—­off—­that—­line!” “Or I’ll know the reason why before to-morrow night!” And then from Bedlam pealed the voice of the flapper, silencing these evil spirits.

“Hello!  Hello!  This line makes me perfectly furious.  To-morrow about three o’clock—­you’re to give us tea and things, some nice place—­Granny and me.  Be along in the car.  I remember the number.  Be there.  Good-bye!”

There was the rattle of a receiver being hung up.  But he stood there not believing it—­tea and car and be there—­The receiver rattled again.

“You knew who I was, didn’t you?”

“Yes, right away,” muttered Bean.  Then he brightened.  “I knew your voice the moment I heard it.”  The madness was upon him and he soared.  “You’re Chubbins!” He waited.

“Cut out the Chubbins stuff, Bill, and get off there!” directed a coarse masculine voice from the unseen wire-world.

He got off there with all possible quickness.  His first thought was that she probably had not heard the magnificent piece of daring.  It was too bad.  Probably he never could do it again.  Then he turned and discovered that he had left the door of the telephone booth ajar.  Chubbins might not have heard him, but Bulger assuredly had.

“Well, well, well!” declaimed Bulger in his best manner.  “Look whom we have with us here to-night!  Old Mr. George W. Fox Bean, keeping it all under his hat.  Chubbins, eh?  Some name, that!  Don’t tell me you thought it up all by yourself, you word-painter!  Miss Chubbsy Chubbins!  Where’s she work?”

Bean saw release.

“Little manicure party,” he confessed; “certain shop not far from here.  Think I’m going to put you wise?”

Bulger was pleased at the implication.

“Ain’t got a friend, has she?”

“No,” said Bean.  “Never did have one.  Some class, too,” he added with a leer that won Bulger’s complete respect.  He breathed freely again and was humming, “Love Me and the World Is Mine,” as they separated.

But when he was alone the song died.  The thing was getting serious.  And she was so assured.  Telling him to be there as if she were Breede himself.  How did she know he had time for all that tea and Grandma nonsense?  Suppose he had had another engagement.  She hadn’t given him time to say.  Hadn’t asked him; just told him.  Well, it showed one thing.  It showed that Bunker Bean could bring women to his feet.